Our research
Neuroimmune therapeutics for psychosis

Our Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (M-RIC) is a partnership of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Liverpool. This enables our research on studying and treating psychosis with early symptoms to take place in mental healthcare services.


What is psychosis?

Psychosis is a mental health problem that causes people to perceive or interpret things differently from those around them. This might involve hallucinations or delusions.


Why have we chosen to carry out research into psychosis?

According to a 2016 Public Health England Report, Liverpool has England’s highest prevalence of psychosis among people over 16. We can conduct research in Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust’s Early Intervention for Psychosis Service which sees hundreds of patients with early symptoms of psychosis each year.


How will we carry out research?

We will put clinical trials and biomedical science at the centre of a Early Intervention for Psychosis Service. This will help us better understand the involvement of the immune system and neurodevelopment in psychosis. Neurodevelopment is the brain’s development of neurological pathways that influence how we perform or function e.g reading ability, social skills, memory, attention or focus skills.

While studying the immune system in relation to psychosis, we will see if changing the way we use anti-inflammatory medications could lead to new treatments for people with psychosis.

With permission of individual service users, we will collect biological samples. By creating a bank of biological samples, it will assist us to discover new ways of characterising and treating psychotic-spectrum disorders such as schizophrenia.

Our research will combine the biological data we collect with data collected via our Combined Intelligence for Translational Health Research (CIX) work to identify new pathways, strategies, and public health interventions for preventing psychosis.


Dr Inti Qurashi, the Lead Investigator for the Neuroimmune Therapeutics for Psychosis research provides an overview of the work package


Where can I find out more information and how can I get involved?

We welcome involvement and interest from service users, members of the public, healthcare, academia, the third sector and industry in our research. To find out more visit our get involved page or contact us.

Putting clinical trials and biomedical science at the centre of NHS Early Intervention for Psychosis services