About the programme

What is MHG?

The Mental Health Goals Programme (MHG) is a cornerstone of the Government’s 2025 Life Sciences Sector Plan. MHG harnesses the UK’s digital and data landscape to build the tools that guide priorities and planning across mental health research, trials, methodology and platforms — alongside the creation of clinically characterised, recontactable cohorts.

Strategic priorities

• A UK-wide government commitment — £50 million to transform mental health research and accelerate improved patient outcomes.
• New innovative alliances — an industry alliance and trials methodology lead ensuring impactful interaction between industry, patients and researchers, with lived experience embedded at its core.
• The world’s largest integrated mental health dataset — combining biological and clinical data across severe depression and psychosis cohorts.
• Unique multi-omics, AI and lived experience integration — enabling the next generation of personalised treatments.
• Making it easier to find suitable UK cohorts and research capabilities — the DIGIT Capabilities Database is being expanded and validated with cohort owners.

The challenge we’re solving

Large companies and small innovators alike — in both the pharmacological and digital therapeutics space — have shown new interest in working in the UK, following promising results in mental health trials and the potential of digital approaches. But it is difficult for industry to work with the UK: the system is complicated, spread across many organisations, and not easy to navigate. Patients also want more say in how their data are used and what kinds of treatments are developed. MHG brings everything together into one joined-up, trusted system.

Mental health problems carry an extremely large burden of disease — 1 in 4 people in England experience a mental health problem each year — while a sustained withdrawal of commercial investment has left few new treatments on the horizon. Advances in genetics, neuroscience, imaging and data science mean now is the time to translate research into patient benefit.

Precision psychiatry

Precision psychiatry uses personal data — such as genomics, brain scans and lifestyle — to better understand an individual’s condition and personalise treatment. For years, patients have said that existing treatments fail to address their most pressing symptoms, cause significant long-term unwanted effects, or diminish quality of life. The programme backs a new approach: one that focuses on the most disabling symptoms, identified by people with lived experience, rather than relying on broad diagnostic labels.

What we will do

MHG brings together experts, data assets, patients and the public through six connected workstreams. The Alliance Management Team supports industry partnerships; the Innovative Clinical Trials Hub strengthens trial design and methodology; and the Lived Experience Industry Partnership helps shape priorities with patients and the public. Alongside them, Digital Innovation supports adoption of digital health technologies, DATAMIND TRE and Observatory connect secure data infrastructure with specialist analytics, and Multi-omics develops deeply characterised cohorts and biological resources. The programme also supports better policy and regulation.

Patients and the public benefit from more say in the trials that affect them and greater transparency in how data are used. Industry benefits from methods and tools for working in the UK, planning more successful trials, and stronger links with experts, data and the people who will benefit from new treatments. Together, this makes the UK a more competitive and attractive place for mental health research and trials.

The world’s largest integrated mental health dataset

The programme is building two cohorts, together adding 20,000 deeply characterised genomic samples. In severe depression, the work is led from King’s College London, building on the GLAD (Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression) Study. In psychosis, it is led from Cardiff University’s Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics with the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh, which also leads multi-omic data generation across the cohort. Both strands are integrated with multi-omics, AI and lived experience.

Funded by government, delivered UK-wide

The programme is investing £50 million over five years, funded by the Office for Life Sciences and delivered by the Medical Research Council (MRC). It is co-chaired by Professor Kathryn Abel and Professor Husseini Manji, with Dr Vaibhav Narayan as Chief Industry, Data Science and Digital Health Officer. The full programme overview is published on GOV.UK.

The wider programme family

MHG sits within a family of government investments in mental health research. The Mental Health Mission, launched in May 2023 with a £42.7 million investment in clinical research centres delivered through the NIHR Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration — including the Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (M-RIC) in Liverpool and the Mental Health Mission Midlands Translational Centre in Birmingham, and a network of mood-disorder research clinics across the UK. The Mission has its own leadership — chaired by Professor Rachel Upthegrove of the University of Oxford, with Professor Jeremy Hall of Cardiff University as deputy chair — and its own remit; the two programmes are designed to complement one another.

In May 2024 the programme invested in DATAMIND — the Hub for Mental Health Informatics Research Development — and in July 2024 an Innovative Clinical Trials Hub was launched to develop infrastructure for innovative clinical trials and a collaborative partnership for industry. Digital adoption activity is published on the Mental Health Digital Innovation (MHDI) website.

Partners across the UK

The programme is delivered by partners spanning all four UK nations: Cardiff University, Health Innovation Oxford & Thames Valley, King’s College London, Queen’s University Belfast, Swansea University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford.

Three of the six workstreams — the Alliance Management Team, Innovative Clinical Trials Hub and Lived Experience Industry Partnership — are delivered together as DIGIT, the Data and Digital Industry Alliance Team.

The full programme overview, including who we are working with, is published on GOV.UK.