Groundbreaking. Cutting edge. Transformative. Revolutionary. These might not be words that you commonly hear in connection with mental health treatments, but I’m hoping to persuade you that this will change.
The vast challenges when it comes to mental health are understandably much better known. Mental health problems affect one in two people globally. Nearly half of all mental health problems emerge by the age of 18. They can go on to disrupt people’s education and careers, holding them back in life.
In my previous role as a clinician in the NHS and in schools, I was very aware of the need for more tailored, personalised and effective treatments to help people at the earliest opportunity.
I have a different vantage point now. In my current role as director of mental health solutions at Wellcome, a charitable foundation which funds science to advance health outcomes, I have the privilege of seeing how new scientific findings are going to transform how we address anxiety, depression and psychosis at the earliest possible point.
They span pharmaceutical, psychological, social interventions and digital approaches. Wellcome is one of the world’s largest funders of mental health research. In all our work, we are informed by the expertise of people with lived experience of mental health problems.
I’ll give you just a taste of the exciting new mental health interventions that are emerging. Virtual reality is being used in a novel treatment to help people stand up to distressing voices that are undermining their mental health.
The first new type of antipsychotic in over 50 years, Cobenfy, was approved for use in the US two years ago. There is a new digitally supported therapy which can help slow down people’s thoughts who are experiencing paranoia. Community interventions such as group singing have been shown to address postnatal depression.
We can now fit the right anti-depressant to the right person, using a tool that combines the best available evidence on pharmacological treatments with an individual’s data, and optimise the right treatment for them.
The first oral drug to treat moderate or severe postnatal depression, zuranolone (Zurzuvae), was approved in the UK just last year. Researchers are driving forward research on psychedelics and ketamine to treat severe depression.
The latest neuroscience findings related to sleep and exercise could lead to new, highly scalable and cost-effective interventions for depression and anxiety. Meanwhile, AI has enormous potential for diagnosis and treatment if we mitigate the risks.
Despite new innovations emerging, the barriers to uptake remain significant. We need new, cost-efficient interventions that can help people without overwhelming public finances. The demand is there.
A poll from More in Common, commissioned by Wellcome, found that 75 per cent of people in Britain want the government to do more to improve mental health services, a reflection of mounting pressure to move beyond rhetoric and deliver change.
As part of this gathering momentum, and in response to the persistent gap between discovery and delivery, we have launched the Wellcome Prize for Mental Health Science with Nature. This is the world’s largest prize for mental health science and the first of its kind.
It is designed to champion bold, credible and transformative advances in the treatment of anxiety, depression and psychosis. The prize, ultimately, aims to raise public awareness of advances in mental health research.
We hope to capture decision-makers’ attention to make these new treatments available to all and accelerate progress in this growing field. The prize is open to research groups and small and medium-sized enterprises from around the world. The winner will receive $1m, with three finalists awarded $250,000 each.
We hope the prize provides visibility, connections and practical support to help winning interventions progress towards adoption and policy integration. And, critically, to help bring to light the huge potential of a new generation of mental health interventions to transform people’s lives and signal where greater public investment and political leadership are now needed. This in turn should catalyse greater investment in mental health from foundations and governments.
Researchers have already made enormous progress on mental health. The next step is to help scale up and implement promising discoveries, to make sure that effective personalised treatments reach those in need. With ambition, this is possible.
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