Our research

Population mental health

We want to make access to mental health services timely and new treatments available earlier. Our population mental health research (formerly known as System-wide Mental Health Discovery and Implementation) will support this by working with service users and partners across the health and care system to gain their valuable insight. We will combine this with vital data and information to understand how we can make improvements in mental healthcare.

People’s mental health and wellbeing is very often influenced by aspects of living that fall outside what we usually think of as the responsibility of mental health services. These aspects are sometimes referred to as the wider or social determinants of mental health. Much of our work will be trying to pull together information about these aspects of life with information from mental health services and support to create a more joined-up understanding of mental distress, its treatment and prevention.

Who will we work with?

Service users and the public – we will run engagement activity to co-create an approach to clinical trials that improves recruitment and participant experience via GPs, apps and other methods.

Civic Data Cooperative – a programme funded by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA) to establish the relationships, infrastructure and governance required to ensure the trustworthy use of data. We will harness data to enable discoveries and improve access to clinical trials.

Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System (ICS) to ensure local NHS mental health services and systems are fully joined up. We want to avoid “closed” and “separate” systems to avoid anyone “falling between gaps” in the provision of their care.