About

The Wellcome Trust is seeking applications for the Mental Health Award to fund projects that robustly test the real-world effectiveness and assess implementation strategies of scalable transformative early interventions for anxiety, depression and psychosis in young people.

Funding Information

• Foundation Phase

  • This first phase of the funding call will provide teams with £200,000 to build their teams and develop their detailed proposal for their research study over 12 months. This research proposal must be for a definitive effectiveness study and assessment of strategies for implementation and scaling of a psychological and/or a social intervention. The research must take place in the UK or a low- and middle-income country (LMIC). The proposal must capture multiple outcomes that are relevant to people with lived experience and implementing partners, including mental health outcomes, functional outcomes and full economic evaluation.

• Impact Phase

  • In the second phase of the funding call, all funded teams from the Foundation Phase will be invited to apply for the Impact Phase. They expect the award amount for the Impact Phase to be between £5 million and £8 million and the duration to be up to 5 years. The upper limits will be confirmed during the Foundation Phase.

Ineligibility Criteria

• You should not apply for this call if:

  • You intend to carry out activities which involve the transfer of funds into mainland China.

  • You cannot demonstrate that you can dedicate enough time and resources to the project, if funded.

  • You already have applied for, or hold, the maximum number of Wellcome awards for your career stage. Find out how many Wellcome awards you can apply for, or hold, at one time depending on your career stage.

  • You are already an applicant on two applications for this funding call. You can be, at a maximum:

    • A lead applicant on one application and a co-applicant on another one.

    • A co-applicant on two applications.

  • You must demonstrate that you have sufficient capacity for both projects if funded. The applications should be for different projects with no overlap of activities. 

Assessment Criteria

• There are five weighted assessment criteria for applications to the Foundation Phase:

  • Strength, scalability and sustainability of the intervention (30%)

  • Suitability of the proposed methodology (20%)

  • Suitability and expertise of the team (20%)

  • Lived experience involvement (20%)

  • Review by a youth panel (10%) 

Eligibility

• You can apply to this call if you are a team:

  • From any relevant discipline. We consider a broad range of disciplines to be relevant to mental health science, including but not limited to those listed in our principles of mental health funding.

  • From eligible organisations.

  • Based anywhere in the world (apart from mainland China). The research itself must take place in the United Kingdom and/or low- or middle- income countries. 

Post Date: August 04, 2025