Mental health problems are a growing public health concern, with anxiety and depression among the leading causes of illness and disability, affecting millions globally each year and causing significant social and economic impacts.
While some treatments work for some people, some of the time, we urgently need to find better approaches that can help more people globally. Wellcome is helping to define a new era of mental health science that will speed progress by combining strengths from many areas of research.
We’re funding cutting-edge science to understand how brain, body and environment interact in mental health problems, to unpick how successful interventions work, and to develop treatments and approaches that are more effective and more personalised.
The world needs a more inclusive mental health science. Wellcome wants to widen science to include new voices and perspectives, and all forms of rigorous exploration of evidence, from the cellular to the social.
Over the next 30 years, we will help find the next generations of treatments and approaches to help prevent or treat mental ill health.
Right now, we are supporting the mental health science community to agree common ways to measure mental health outcomes, so that researchers can compare and consider results across different studies and disciplines. We’re encouraging and enabling connections across the research community, and involving people with lived experience every step of the way so that the ways we address mental health challenges are meaningful to those most affected.
Wellcome also funds discovery research in a broad range of disciplines, including mental health. Insights and tools from this research will contribute to solving this health challenge, as well as increasing broader understanding of life, health and wellbeing.
that can find more effective solutions for mental health problems
A global databank
with evidence about what mental health approaches work
Building a shared understanding
of the routes to positive mental health
How we're doing it
We want the broadest range of people to contribute to and benefit from equitable solutions to mental health problems. That’s why we work with researchers, people with lived experience, policy makers, activists, community leaders and businesses in all parts of the world.
We want to develop a sustainable and fair global databank to collect rich data about which approaches could help people better manage their mental health.
Mindscapes is our international cultural programme of artist residencies, exhibitions and events in different cities around the world.
Funding
Grant funding: If you’re looking for funding to support your research ideas, have a look at our discovery research funding schemes. These are open to applicants based in the UK, the Republic of Ireland and low- and middle-income countries, and coapplicants from the rest of the world if applying as part of a team.
Commissions: We often have calls for specific research projects as part of our mental health work, for applicants and teams in any country. Our funding covers both back-translation (working backwards from the evidence of what works to understand why this is) and forward-translation (developing new approaches from theories developed out of basic discovery research).
[Summary] This report summarises what we’ve learned about the evidence for 'active ingredients' of effective interventions for youth anxiety and depression.
