New funding to build mental health research capacity and capability

Our Multimorbidity and Mental Health Theme have learned that their bid to uplift the infrastructure capacity and capability for mental health research with the NIHR ARC NWL (£750K) was supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

Led by Principal Investigator Dasha Nicholls (Multimorbidity & Mental Health Theme), Shamini Gnani (Child Population Health Theme) and Dougal Hargreaves (Child Population Health Theme) the work, which has now started, has three priority objectives for building sustainable infrastructure.

Support for young people

Dasha commented:

“Whilst some great mental health research is happening in Northwest London, our capacity to conduct research has been limited. This funding will provide new opportunities to implement good support and treatment for young people around their mental health, both in prevention and to help those already in need. The pandemic has highlighted how vital it is that access to such care is possible for all those who need it.”

Initially, they will develop a collaborative network (WP1) within the NWL Integrated Care System (ICS) and convene stakeholder workshops to co-develop the children and young people’s mental health dashboard within Whole Systems Intyegrated Care (WSIC) (WP2). Using these data, they will co-develop with schools a plan to assess need for and uptake of targeted interventions for children and young people in greatest need (WP3), with the explicit aim of tackling inequalities in outcomes, experience and access, and to inform and educate about evidence-based approaches to mental wellbeing.

Working in partnership

Partners will include the NIHR Clinical Research Network, Imperial’s School of Public Health, Division of Psychiatry, Mohn Centre for Child Health and Wellbeing, Centre for Paediatrics and Child Health; Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust and West London NHS Trust providers of secondary care mental health services; ICHP, NWL ICS, Primary Care Networks (PCNs), Young Healthwatch and Community Organisations.