About us

‌Our vision

World-leading interdisciplinary research leading to a fuller understanding of the causes of mental disorders, with a view to improving population mental health and reducing health inequalities.

Our mission

To provide robust evidence on the causes of mental disorders and to develop and evaluate innovative treatment approaches for individuals, their families and the broader population.

Our goals

  1. Investigating the impact and interaction of psychological, developmental, social, interpersonal, biological, genetic, environmental, lifestyle and health service factors on risk for mental disorder and population mental health.
  2. Conducting clinical trials of therapeutic and complex interventions for individuals with complex mental health problems including research dedicated to understanding the psychological, social, interpersonal and biological mechanisms of therapeutic change.

Examples of the research activities of Mental Health and Wellbeing Research Group are:

  • The development and evaluation of new psychosocial interventions for common and complex mental health problems, with trials of therapeutic and complex interventions in adult mental health and suicidal behaviour, disability and in parent-infant mental health.  These trials are underpinned by a programme of work aimed at the specification, measurement and validation of psychological, interpersonal and biological mechanisms of change.
  • Our focus on epidemiology is charting trajectories to determine when, where and how to intervene but also has considerable experience and there is a strong culture of studying the life course and determinants of mental health and wellbeing through prospective cohort studies.
  • We also have excellent links to the NHS in Scotland and in particular the Scottish Mental Health Research Network and Clinical Research Facilities based in Glasgow and elsewhere.
  • Our capacity to utilise and follow-up cohorts is internationally renowned.  We have access to Scotland's birth to death datasets of routinely collected data, we are home to Generation Scotland, and numerous MRC and other funded prospective cohort studies such as the Twenty-07 cohort, the 11-16 and 16+ studies, Peers and Levels of Stress, Determinants of Adolescent Social Wellbeing and Health, and the Aberdeen Children of the 1950s study.
  • We host cohorts of adults with learning disabilities, adults with acquired brain injury, high-risk adults for psychosis and adults with first episode psychosis.
  • Within the School, the Scottish Health Informatics Programme (SHIP:  www.scot-ship.ac.uk) supports an innovative mix of studies conducting health research using electronic patient records and major longitudinal cohort datasets.  We also host a programme of research on complex interventions in mental health so have a particular interest in complex health problems and in particular of suicidal behaviour, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and personality disorders.

Our history

Mental Health and Wellbeing was originally established as The Department of Psychological Medicine in 1948-1949.

Our original name, Psychological Medicine, was adopted to reflect the department's commitment to the psychological sciences relevant to medicine - at that time, Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry.

Restructuring within the University of Glasgow in 2010/2011 resulted in the formation of Mental Health and Wellbeing, an integral part of the School for Health and Wellbeing.

This restructuring provided us with the opportunity to focus on our strengths in Clinical Psychology, Health Psychology and Psychiatry whilst strengthening our commitment to understanding and maximising population mental health and wellbeing across the life course, amongst vulnerable groups within our society whilst developing and evaluating new therapeutic interventions through complex clinical trials.