Mental health research – what’s in it for us?

23 October 2019

This year marks 70 years since the creation of the Mental Health Foundation. When the Foundation was initially started it was known as the Mental Health Research Fund and though it has changed in many ways over the years, mental health research is still at the core of what we do today.

In particular, we focus on research related to prevention and mental health. This means exploring the ways that mental health problems can be stopped before they occur, and the ways that we can support everyone with and without a mental health problem to stay well.

Why we have partnered with Cochrane Common Mental Health Disorders

There is a vast amount of mental health research out there and it can be really difficult to make sense of it all. How do we take stock of what we know and what we still need to discover? This is where the Cochrane Common Mental Disorders team come in.

The Cochrane team are key experts in “systematic reviews” which is a way of comprehensively bringing together all the existing research on a topic and pooling the findings to better understand what the research tells us overall, how strong the evidence is, and where further exploration is needed.

This type of work is important for truly understanding what the research means and whether we should apply it to practice, to policy, and to our own lives.

The Mental Health Foundation have launched a new partnership between ourselves and Cochrane Common Mental Disorders, pulling on the strengths of both organisations to start a new programme of work that will focus on understanding what the research tells us in the areas of: mental health prevention, children and young people’s mental health, and the connection between mental health and physical health.

Mental health research starts with you

However, the most important part of this new partnership isn’t either of us, it’s you. We strongly believe that in order for research to be meaningful, it needs to answer the questions that are most important to everyone and it needs to do so in a way that has a real impact on people’s lives – their workplaces, their families and their communities.

Mental health research – What’s In it for us? This is the questions we will be looking to answer over the coming weeks and months, Watch this space for further opportunities to get involved. We are excited to share this new step forward with you all.

Help us answer the most pressing questions of our time, so that we can prevent mental health problems and help people lead mentally healthier lives.

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