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Mental Health Goals

Updated 14 October 2025

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What we do

Mental health problems carry an extremely large burden of disease, with it now representing the single largest driver of disability in the UK. Alongside growing patient concerns, there has been a significant withdrawal of commercial investment into mental health research over recent decades, resulting in a lack of new treatments on the horizon. However, major advances in genetics, neuroscience, imaging, and data science, in addition to emerging new treatment approaches and rapid growth in digital technologies, means that now is the time to accelerate the translation of research into patient benefits.

The Mental Health Goals (MHG) programme aims to create an innovative alliance between people with mental health conditions – whose views are often not prioritised – and industry – who face unparalleled challenges in mental health R&D – to accelerate precision psychiatry and deliver valuable new treatments that work for those who need them.

The MHG programme is jointly led by Co-Chairs Professor Kathryn Abel and Professor Husseini Manji, who are responsible for setting the strategic direction, driving forward delivery, building stakeholder relationships, and representing the programme both nationally and internationally. The programme also benefits from the expertise of Dr Vaibhav Narayan who serves as Chief Industry, Data Science and Digital Health Officer.

Precision psychiatry is an approach to mental health treatment that uses personal data – such as genomics, brain scans, and lifestyle – to better understand an individual’s condition and to personalise treatment to help maximise its effectiveness. For years, patients have voiced concerns that existing treatments fail to address their most pressing symptoms, often cause significant long-term unwanted effects or withdrawal symptoms, and diminish their quality of life. Mental health conditions are currently diagnosed and treated by identifying certain biological markers and symptom patterns. However, this method often overlooks the specific symptoms that people find the most troubling. A new approach is needed – one that focuses on the most disabling symptoms, identified by those with lived experience, rather than relying on broad diagnostic labels.

The MHG programme is investing up to £50 million over five years to put people with lived experience at the heart of mental health research and innovation. Announced on World Mental Health Day, this landmark investment signals the UK’s ambition to be at the forefront of global efforts in precision psychiatry. Funded by the Office for Life Sciences and delivered by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the MHG will support  leading experts in mental health data, digital technology, genomics and multiomics, lived experience, industry partnerships, and trials methodology to build sustainable infrastructure that transforms mental health research  and delivers real improvements for people affected by mental health problems.

Specifically, the MHG programme will:

  • Create a large, high-quality, longitudinal  repository of biological samples and health data, including 20,000 genomic samples building on the Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) cohort and Mental Health Mission Clinical Networks (below). By enriching these datasets further with detailed clinical, digital, and multiomics data, researchers will be better equipped to understand the genetic and biological factors related to mental health problems and to support the development of precision therapies.
  • Establish a secure, national platform to bring together mental health data, including omics, from across the UK, making it easier for researchers and industry to access and use information safely and efficiently.
  • Facilitate better and more efficient adoption of digital mental health tools in the NHS by developing clear pathways and standards, and by exploring how different types of health data, including clinical, genetic and wearable data, can be integrated.
  • Form a pioneering Lived Experience Industry Partnership to foster trust and initiate equal partnerships between people with lived experience of mental health problems, industry and researchers to ensure new innovations reflect real-world needs.
  • Provide a clear point of entry for innovators to engage with and access the UK’s mental health research expertise and health data, in addition to wider support to rapidly set up clinical trials.

By building deeply characterised research cohorts and improving access to high-quality mental health data, this investment will empower researchers to accelerate innovation. Prioritisation of lived experience partners, robust data infrastructure, and clear adoption pathways will remove barriers for industry and position the UK as a global leader in commercial clinical trials. Through targeted support and strategic partnerships, we are laying the foundation for a thriving mental health innovation ecosystem that delivers real-world benefits at scale.

Detailed plans for this investment are currently being finalised. This webpage will be updated with further information as details are confirmed, and implementation progresses.

Previous investments

The Mental Health Mission (MHM) – part of the Mental Health Goals programme – was launched in May 2023, with funding to support innovation in mental health research, services, and digital technology. This £42.7 million investment in clinical research centres across the UK is being delivered through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration (MH-TRC) – a network of leading investigators specialising in mental health research.

The MHM is delivered under three broad themes:

  • Of the total investment, more than £20 million has been invested in establishing two demonstrator sites in the Midlands and Liverpool, dedicated to revolutionising mental health research by bringing patients and industry together in true partnership.

  • Linked to the MHM demonstrator sites, MH-TRC workstreams will bring together expertise in:

    • Early Psychosis: developing research infrastructure to facilitate earlier identification, treatment, and prevention of emerging psychosis.
    • Children and Young People’s Mental Health: developing the infrastructure and capacity for early phase studies for new treatments for children and adolescent mental health.
    • Data and Digital: enabling technologies to be used efficiently and consistently in the development and evaluation of new treatments through harnessing new forms of data and leveraging informatics for a trials platform.
    • Capacity Development: providing increased capacity and capability to conduct mental health research.
    • Mood Disorders: developing a network of mood disorder research clinics to run trials of treatments and studies in patients with difficult-to-treat depression. In November 2024, an additional £18 million was invested in an expansion of the network to include a total of 15 clinics in areas across the UK with the highest levels of depression.

  • A dedicated strategic and operational management team who support coordination and linking of activities across the initiative in partnership with external stakeholders including industry, regulatory authorities (e.g. Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), NHS England, industry facing NIHR infrastructure and patient facing organisations.

In May 2024, the Mental Health Goals programme invested in DATAMIND – the Hub for Mental Health Informatics Research Development – to support with robust data and digital infrastructure. 

An Innovative Clinical Trials Hub was launched under the Goals programme in July 2024, to develop infrastructure for innovative clinical trials in the UK and create a collaborative partnership for industry to support the design and delivery of their innovative trials.

Who we are

The Mental Health Goals programme is co-chaired by Professors Kathryn Abel and Husseini Manji.

Kathryn Abel, Co-Chair of the Mental Health Goals.

Kathryn M. Abel is Professor of Psychological Medicine and Director of the Centre for Women’s Mental Health at the University of Manchester. She is an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist for Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Trust where she is also Director of the GM Digital Research Unit. She has been at the forefront of delivering mental health research in NHS and academic settings to inform policy and practice and her work underpins important policy and service developments for women in services. She was the NIHR CRN National Speciality Lead for Mental Health for a decade delivering high quality research for NHS patients, is an NIHR Senior Investigator and a European Research Council Fellow. Kathryn has also been elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences and is a visiting Professor at the IoPPN. 

Husseini Manji, Co-Chair of the Mental Health Goals.

Husseini Manji is a Professor at the University of Oxford, Adjunct Professor at the Yale University and a Visiting Professor at Duke University. He was previously the Global Therapeutic Head for Neuroscience at Janssen Research & Development pharmaceutical companies, and Global Head, Science for Minds, at Johnson & Johnson. Before joining Johnson & Johnson, Dr Manji was Chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Pathophysiology at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Director of the NIH Mood and Anxiety Disorders Programme, the largest programme of its kind in the world.

Vaibhav Narayan, Mental Health Goals Chief Industry, Data Science and Digital Health Officer.

Dr. Vaibhav Narayan has over 20 years of leadership experience in data sciences, digital health and pharmaceutical Research and Development, including more than 13 years at Johnson & Johnson as Vice President of Data Sciences and Digital Health and part of the Neuroscience Therapeutic Area senior leadership team. Earlier senior roles include Head of Discovery Informatics at Eli Lilly & Co., and Director of Computational Sciences at Celera Genomics where his team participated in the sequencing, assembly and annotation of the human genome.

Who we are working with

The MH-TRC is led by Chair Rachel Upthegrove (Professor of Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health at the University of Oxford) and Deputy Chair Jeremy Hall (Professor of Psychiatry at Cardiff University).

DATAMIND is led by Co-Directors Ann John (Professor of Public Health and Psychiatry, Health Data Science at Swansea University) and Rob Stewart (Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Clinical Informatics at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London).

Dr Matthias Pierce (Biostatistician and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Women’s Mental Health, University of Manchester) will lead the MHG programme Data Observatory.

The Innovative Clinical Trials Hub is led by Richard Emsley (Professor of Medical Statistics and Trials Methodology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London) and Mitul Mehta (Professor of Neuroimaging & Psychopharmacology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London).

Digital adoption efforts will be led by Dr Pauline Whelan (Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Digital Health, at the University of Manchester and Chief Operating Officer at CareLoop Health Ltd) and Dr Trina Histon (Health Psychologist, Digital Health Strategist and Director of Percolating Health).  

As we formalise arrangements with other partners, we will update this page with their details.

Contact details

You can contact the Mental Health Goals by email: mentalhealthgoals@officeforlifesciences.gov.uk.

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