NHS England has shared that 50,000 eligible adults living with bipolar, schizophrenia, psychosis, or major depression in England and Wales have been invited to the “world’s largest” mental health study looking to promote personalised treatment for severe mental illness.
The GlobalMinds study, led by mental health data science company Akrivia Health Ltd in partnership with Cardiff University, will last for three years, and will ultimately expand to include participants from other countries. So far, ten NHS mental health trusts are supporting the project: South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust; Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust; Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust; Cardiff and Vale University Health Board; Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust; Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust; Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust; Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust; Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust; and Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust.
Eligible patients will be identified through NHSE’s DigiTrials service, and contacted to find out if they would like to take part, with home sampling kits provided for blood or saliva samples. Participants will receive a voucher up to the value of £50 for taking part.
Detailed questionnaires will be sent out for participants to complete online, seeking to understand what can increase the risk or severity of serious mental health conditions. Information will also be taken from participants’ NHS medical records, allowing for links to be made between genes, background, biology, and mental health.
The study is supported by NIHR and the Rethink Mental Illness charity, with funding from the Wellcome Trust and Johnson & Johnson. The resulting dataset is hoped to help improve understanding and diagnosis of serious mental health conditions, and to enable more personalised treatments.
Chief investigator James Walters, from Cardiff University, said that the study offers an “unprecedented opportunity” to understand the personal and biological factors behind mental head conditions, pointing to the potential benefits in allowing earlier diagnosis and treatment. “Precision medicine has already revolutionised the treatment of cancer and other rare diseases and we want GlobalMinds to bring the same breakthroughs to mental health,” he continued. “By creating the first large-scale dataset linking both genetic and detailed routine clinical information, GlobalMinds will unlock a new era of personalised mental health care, so we can help tackle the global mental health crisis.”
Wider trend: Digital mental health
Thames Valley and Wessex Adult Secure Provider Collaborative has opened a preliminary market engagement exercise for a patient flow clinical information system to be used across its low and medium adult mental health services, known as Shaped for Me. The collaborative, a partnership of seven mental health service providers including NHS trusts and independent providers across five integrated care systems, is aiming to understand the market capability to deliver a digital platform to replace its current incumbent solution.
Researchers at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Cambridge are to lead on a project to create a “publicly accessible platform for exploring how genes and molecules influence mental health”. The Open Psychiatry Project, has been provided with £2.3 million funding from the UK Research and Innovation Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health and Care Research. The project aims to deliver a platform to offer data-driven support to researchers, clinicians, health partners and patients when it comes to understanding mental health conditions and how best to treat them.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has issued new guidance for the public and healthcare professionals on the use of apps and digital tools for mental health support, aiming to help people make more informed choices and “know what to do if something doesn’t feel right”. As part of the new guidance, the agency has published online resources including animations and real-world examples demonstrating “what safe, well-evidenced digital mental health technologies look like in practice”, going on to explain how to report concerns through the MHRA Yellow Card scheme. The resources form part of a project designed to support the safe and effective use of digital mental health technologies, funded by the Wellcome Trust.
