Mental health research
This page contains details of the MRC-led review of mental health research in the UK and the MRC's plans to implement the recommendations that fall within MRC’s areas of responsibility
MRC-led Review of Mental Health Research
In May 2010, the MRC published a comprehensive review of mental health research in the UK. It was undertaken in order to advise the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR) and its funding partners on UK research opportunities and priorities for improving mental health.
Mental ill health is a huge social and economic burden on people and societies around the world. It is estimated to cost at least £77 billion a year in England alone, where one in four people are affected by a mental health disorder at some stage in their life. While the UK has a strong track record in excellent mental health research, the MRC review identified many strategic opportunities to build on this work to meet urgent biological, psychosocial and public health needs.
The review picked out priority areas, strengths and gaps in current research practice, focusing on four key themes in mental health: severe mental illness (primarily psychosis); anxiety and depression (bipolar disorder was included in this theme); neurodevelopmental, learning and intellectual disabilities; and pathways to mental wellbeing.
A number of recommendations were identified to be addressed by the UK research community in the next five to 10 years, which set out the ambition to:
- Provide a greater focus on the prevention of mental disorders based on better understanding of causes, risk levels and new approaches to early preventive interventions.
- Accelerate research and development to provide new, more effective treatments for mental illness, and to implement them more rapidly.
Implementation of the review’s recommendations that fall within MRC's areas of responsibility
MRC has decided that it will concentrate on:
- Experimental medicine for mental health.
- Population based approaches to identifying the risk factors for poor mental health and the determinants of mental wellbeing.
- Increasing the flow of trainees into mental health research and building human capacity
Experimental medicine for mental health
MRC has launched a call that will consider grant applications that will support research that pump-primes experimental medicine for new treatments and enhances the pipeline to other funding opportunities such as the DCS scheme. Information on this scheme can be found here.
Population-science based approaches
The UK provides significant investment in high quality, data-rich, long-term cohorts, largely through Research Council investment in generic longitudinal studies applicable to a number of research areas. The UK has a leading international position in this area. MRC has now launched a new call for data sharing projects aiming to support secondary analysis of existing investments, with a view to linking and sharing population and patient based data from different cohorts and serial datasets.
Although the review of mental health primarily argued against setting up new cohorts until current ones have been fully exploited, it identified one specific research gap where longitudinal data were missing, in the area of neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly learning and intellectual disability. This could not be addressed through general population cohorts due to the relatively low prevalence rates.
MRC is therefore considering whether a case could be made for a new cohort to focus specifically on the important but under-researched area of neurodevelopmental disorders. This would be dependent on further scoping work.
Increasing the flow of trainees into mental health research and building human capacity (Mental Health Research Capacity Building Strategy).
The MRC is considering a number of options in this area. Together with the Medical Research Foundation, a call has already been launched for a new clinical research training programme in mental health. Further details can be found here
