Eight new Mental Health Networks have been announced by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to bring researchers, charities and other organisations together to address important mental health research questions.

The new Networks will embrace a collaborative ethos, bringing together researchers from a wide range of disciplines, including health, medicine, biology, social sciences, humanities and environmental sciences. Many of the networks will also include insight from charity workers, health practitioners and people with lived experience of mental health issues.

The Networks, which are supported with £8 million of funding and will be funded for four years (one for three), will progress mental health research into themes such as the profound health inequalities for people with severe mental ill health, social isolation, youth and student mental health, domestic and sexual violence, and the value of community assets. 

The new Networks include the Transdisciplinary Research for the Improvement of Youth Mental Public Health (TRIUMPH) Network, led by the University of Glasgow’s Professor of Social Sciences and Health, Lisa McDaid, from the Institute of Health and Wellbeing’s  MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit.

In this Network, academics will work with young people, health practitioners, policymakers and voluntary organisations to find new ways to improve mental health and wellbeing, especially among vulnerable and disadvantaged populations.

Prof McDaid said: “In today’s society young people face extraordinary pressures to maintain their mental health. They live in an ever-changing environment, driven by changes in technology, communications and the media. These changes have coincided with an increase in mental health problems amongst young people, especially girls.

“One in ten children and young people experience mental health problems, yet we have few effective solutions for the improvement of youth mental public health.  Treatment and care, when accessible, treats the problem, not the causes and we believe there is a different solution-focused approach – one that seeks to understand young people’s strengths, assets and resiliencies, which we can draw on to improve health. 

“This is why young people will be at the centre of the TRIUMPH Network and by bringing them together with academics from across the clinical, social, arts and design sciences with practitioners and policy makers, we will work together to find bold solutions to prevent and reduce mental health problems.”

Partners in the TRIUMPH Network include London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Queen’s University of Belfast, University of Edinburgh, Cardiff University, The Glasgow School of Art, Mental Health Foundation.

Professor Sir Mark Walport, Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation, said: “Mental ill health is the single largest cause of disability in the UK, and it is estimated that almost a quarter of the country’s population are affected by mental health issues each year.

“The UKRI Mental Health Networks will take a new approach to addressing this challenge by bringing together researchers across a wide range of disciplines with people who have experienced mental health issues, charities, health practitioners and other organisations. Through their work, the new Networks will further our understanding about the causes, development and treatments of a wide range of mental health issues.”  

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Enquiries: ali.howard@glasgow.ac.uk or elizabeth.mcmeekin@glasgow.ac.uk / 0141 330 6557 or 0141 330 4831

First published: 6 September 2018