Author name:
Sophie Quick
Institution name: MHP Coordinating team
Published 17 December 2024
Reflecting on 2024, Ready for 2025
What’s happened so far?
We’re proud of everything the MHP has achieved so far – take a look at some highlights and find out what we’ve got planned for next year...
September: The MHP launches
The UKRI Mental Health Platform officially launched!
As part of our launch, all Hubs worked together on a set of logos to make ourselves instantly recognisable to you and bring a sense of identity to our work. We hope you like them too.
We think the Platform has the potential to be transformative for people affected by severe mental illness (SMI). We’re making real progress every month and we are excited to continue working hard to create ways of accelerating research and deliver meaningful impact.
October: Hubs of activity
In October, the Metabolic Psychiatry Hub debuted their "In Conversation" series with Dr. Joanne Kenney. This series offers insights from experts on emerging research and clinical practices in this innovative field.
Read the full interview on the MP website
Also this month, DATAMIND hosted their Data Science Meeting in partnership with MQ Mental Health Research. Topics included patient data privacy, the use of big clinical data, and interdisciplinary collaborations.
November: Collaborating and connecting
In November, a highlight for us all were two very important meetings: the inaugural gathering of our Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Hub leads and our face-to-face meeting of the leadership team.
The PPIE leads shared insights from their Hubs and started to plan how to build involvement into all our initiatives across the MHP.
The Leadership team in-person meeting focused on identifying new ways to collaborate across Hubs. The team also heard from one of the PPIE representatives about the different Hub PPIE groups work and the preliminary MHP PPIE plans, which will be further developed with PPIE members.
Collaboration is at the heart of the Platform’s vision and these meetings are part of our commitment to working together to drive meaningful change. Bringing together diverse perspectives in person allowed for great discussions and innovative ideas to be shared.
December: Planning for 2025
This December, one of our focuses has been to create the MHP PPIE Steering Group, with representatives from all six Hubs. This will ensure the voices of those with lived experience of SMI continue to be at the heart of our work.
Research is getting underway across the Hubs, including recruitment for participants. We’re all excited by the potential this new network of researchers offers for the field of mental health research.
What’s next?
Guided by our values of collaboration, inclusivity, and driving meaningful impact, we are actively planning for 2025.
Excitingly, we’ll be awarding funding for new projects – keep an eye on our website and social media for more information. We’re also working towards our first ever research conference, as well as events for people with lived experience of SMI and early career researchers.
The year ahead promises to be an exciting time, advancing mental health research improve the lives of people affected by SMI.