Embedding research in routine mental health care: a coordinated national approach across psychosis and mood disorders

Date: Wednesday 17 June
Time: 4.10pm - 5.25pm

Overview

Mental health research is entering a new phase, enabled by national infrastructures that embed research within routine clinical care. Across psychosis and mood disorders, the NIHR Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration (MH-TRC) provides a coordinated, UK-wide model for accelerating discovery, widening access to innovation, and strengthening links between academic psychiatry and everyday practice.

This session brings together leaders from the MH-TRC, the Early Psychosis workstream, and the Mood Disorder Research Clinic Network to present a shared, practical approach to “research for everyone”. Speakers will describe how multicentre collaboration, co-production with people with lived experience, and structured industry engagement support ambitious cohort studies, adaptive platform trials, and earlier access to novel treatments.

Drawing on real-world examples from psychosis and mood disorders, the session explores transferable models for embedding research across primary and secondary care. Topics include building trial-ready services, supporting workforce development, addressing clinician-identified barriers to participation, and improving inclusive recruitment.

The session concludes with a facilitated panel discussion examining lived experience leadership and industry engagement as enabling infrastructure for ethical, inclusive and sustainable translational mental health research.

This session aims to:

  • describe how a coordinated national approach supports the integration of research into clinical care for psychosis and mood disorders
  • compare practical models for delivering large-scale, multicentre mental health research within routine clinical services
  • identify common barriers and facilitators to embedding a research culture in everyday practice, drawing on clinician experience
  • explain how lived experience leadership and industry engagement enable inclusive, ethical and impactful translational mental health research.

Speakers

  • The mental health translational research collaboration: a coordinated national approach to embedding translational research
    • Professor Rachel Upthegrove, University of Oxford, Oxford
  • Turbocharging psychosis research in the UK
    • Professor Graham Murray, University of Cambridge, Cambridge
    • Dr Jacqueline Robbins, Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust, Canterbury
    • Dr Marie Bowers, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge
  • Research for everyone: Mood disorder research clinics embedded in routine care
    • Dr Mourad Wahba, Newcastle University, Newcastle
  • Panel
    • Dr Lesley Booth, Betina Nair, Ms Sara Philips
Register for Congress 2026

Please email congress@rcpsych.ac.uk or call 020 8618 4120 with any enquiries.