Funding Opportunities

Wellcome’s mental health strategic aim is to drive a transformative change in early intervention for anxiety, depression and psychosis. Embedding lived experience expertise is central to this so we can reflect the priorities and needs of people who experience these problems to our mission. With this Mental Health Award we want to transform interventions for young people experiencing depression and anxiety through funding mechanistic trials of interventions that are scalable, safe and effective. Our rationale for this call Anxiety and depression are two of the biggest health challenges among young people globally. Existing interventions are often not tailored for young people, and many do not experience lasting improvement. To better understand how to address these gaps, we commissioned a landscaping report to examine opportunities in youth mental health interventions. The report highlighted that, while many approaches can reduce symptoms, how they work is often poorly understood. There is a clear need for research that directly tests mechanisms to refine interventions so that more young people can benefit. The report noted that there are some advances in promising but underexplored intervention areas, including lifestyle, social and creative approaches. Among these, physical activity and sleep-based interventions stand out for having the strongest evidence of efficacy. They are accessible, cost-effective, and straightforward to deliver, yet their mechanistic foundations remain underdeveloped. Although these interventions are scalable in theory, few health or educational systems have scaled them. Importantly, sleep and physical activity are physiologically and behaviourally intertwined, and advances in wearable technology now enable measurement of both as part of a circadian cycle. This dual focus opens the door to more precise, data-driven measurement, which can support tailoring interventions to individual needs. By focusing this Mental Health Award on these promising intervention categories, we aim to support research with the greatest potential to generate impactful, mechanistically informed and transformative interventions for young people.