Shared goals for mental health research: what, why and when for the 2020s

Abstract

Mental health problems bring substantial individual, community and societal costs and the need for innovation to promote good mental health and to prevent and treat mental health problems has never been greater. However, we know that research findings can take up to 20 years to implement. One way to push the pace is to focus researchers and funders on shared, specific goals and targets. We describe a consultation process organised by the Department of Health and Social Care and convened by the Chief Medical Officer to consider high level goals for future research efforts and to begin to identify UK-specific targets to measure research impact. The process took account of new scientific methods and evidence, the UK context with a universal health care system (the NHS) and the embedded research support from the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network, as well as the views of individual service users and service user organisations. The result of the consultation is a set of four overarching goals with the potential to be measured at intervals of three, five or ten years.

Keywords:

• Mental health
• research priorities
• research goals
• research funding

Acknowledgements

Chris Whitty, Alison Tingle, and Ursula Wells from the Department of Health and Social Care, Kathryn Adcock and Jo Latimer from the MRC, Mary De Silva, Andrew Welchman and Raliza Stoyanova from the Wellcome Trust, Wendy Matcham from ESRC, Penny Wilson from Innovate UK, Cynthia Joyce, Neil Balmer and Sophie Dix from MQ, Dan Robotham from McPin Foundation, Jacob Diggle from Mind, Gregor Henderson from Public Health England, Karen Turner and Tim Kendall from NHS-England, and the many academics who contributed to initial meetings and discussions on the goal development.

Disclosure statement

Almost all authors have received funding from any, or all, of the following funders - the National Institute for Health Research, Wellcome Trust, UKRI, MQ and other charities supporting research. The contents of this paper were informed by the views of these funders, but the funders are not responsible for any of the specific content.

Additional information

Funding

TW acknowledges support from her NIHR Senior Investigator Award and PBJ acknowledges support from the NIHR ARC East of England.