National UK Mental Health Mission co-chairs Professor Kathryn Abel and Professor Husseini Manji visited Liverpool today (15 June) to learn more about the city’s exciting plans to accelerate mental health research.
The visit showcased plans for the newly announced Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (M-RIC) led by the University of Liverpool and Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust. The visit took place at the Spine Building in the heart of Liverpool’s Knowledge Quarter where they met M-RIC staff, along with senior NHS and university leaders, to hear about the ground-breaking research already underway.
M-RIC was awarded £10.5 million funding from the Office for Life Sciences and the National Institute for Health and Care Research as part of the UK Mental Health Mission. The Mission aims to increase mental health research through a UK network of leading investigators called the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration which includes M-RIC in Liverpool.
M-RIC brings together healthcare providers, academic researchers, and industry to improve mental healthcare for patients and service users and focuses upon under-researched areas such as early intervention in psychosis, depression, and children and young people’s mental health. The aim is for research to be embedded in mental healthcare so treatments can be improved the more they are used, studied and refined. It will provide service users in Liverpool City Region with easier access to clinical trials and increase their involvement in better care, closer to home.
National UK Mental Health Mission co-chairs Kathryn Abel and Husseini Manji said: “We are delighted to visit Liverpool and hear directly from the University of Liverpool and Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust their plans for the new Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre, funded as part of the UK Mental Health Mission.
“We are working together to make the new Mental Health Mission a truly revolutionary force behind mental health research. We want the Mission to create tangible differences to the lives of patients in Liverpool, across the UK and internationally.
“Bringing together the public sector, patients and industry as equal partners, the Mission will work with the Office for Life Sciences and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to support the NHS and NIHR to capitalise on its size and scope, and on the depth of its data resources. Alongside additional investment in mental health research and infrastructure, the Mission will foster a step change in the way we think about mental health, mental illness and its treatment. This will support development of the critically needed treatments across the spectrum of mental illness.”