Blog authors: Claire Carswell, James Myers, James Tait, Olivia Taylor, Ruth Wadman, Emily Wood, Simon Gilbody, Lewis Paton
As the next phase of the ARC begins, we have a vital opportunity to reflect on the pressing national challenges facing mental health services, and outline how research in our region is rising to meet them. As in the previous ARC, the mental health theme is a close collaboration between the Universities of Sheffield and York. In this month’s blog, we are staging a ‘York takeover’ to spotlight our specific research plans, which focus on two groups in particular: children and young people, and those living with severe mental illness.
Children, young people and the digital frontier
Mental health challenges among young people continue to rise dramatically. The charity Young Minds outlines some startling statistics, with one in five young people now having a probable mental health condition. Demand for mental health support continues to be extremely high, with long waiting lists for NHS services.
We aim to help reduce these pressures with our research. We are looking-forward to continuing our work on school and community-based interventions aiming to improve wellbeing. For instance, the NIHR funded PPAMH! Trial (Promoting Positive Adolescent Mental Health) is currently underway in schools across Bradford. This innovative trial empowers pupils by creating a participative school environment to improve wellbeing, drawing on global learning from India and Australia.
The NHS 10 Year Health Plan outlines the role that transformative technology will play in modernising care and shifting the health service from sickness to prevention. We are leveraging data and AI to better understand youth mental health and identifying opportunities to develop novel interventions. We are excited to be working with the world-leading Age of Wonder cohort to better understand inequalities in access to care and outcomes. We are also building on our previous work developing the Age of Wonder ‘Curated Dataset’ for student projects, working with our colleagues in universities across the region and nationally to build crucial research capacity in mental health data science.
The role that online environments, social media and AI chatbots are having on the mental health and wellbeing of young people is of critical importance. There has been widespread media coverage about online harms, and high-profile court cases in the USA. Governments worldwide have begun to implement legislation aiming to reduce online risks, and in the UK there was a recent consultation on age restrictions on social media. We are thrilled to be on the cutting edge of research in this space, working with our colleagues at the University of York’s ‘Smart Data Donation Service’, where thousands of individuals are sharing objective records of their online lives for research. By applying advanced AI methods to the donated data, we will drive up our understanding of online risks (and potential benefits too), and ultimately develop bespoke interventions to help young people improve their digital behaviours.
Closing the gap in severe mental illness
People with severe mental illness (conditions like schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder) experience significant health inequalities, leading to the growing mortality gap where, on average, they die 15-20 years earlier than people without severe mental illness. This is mostly due to the poor physical health of this population, as people experience higher rates of long-term conditions such as type 2 diabetes, COPD and cardiovascular disease, and experience worse outcomes. Despite years of research into how to address this gap, it is widening.
Recent NIHR research has focused mostly on self-management interventions to address this gap. The NIHR PGfAR-funded DIAMONDS programme of research (Diabetes and Mental Illness, Improving Outcomes and Self-management) developed and evaluated a self-management intervention for people with type 2 diabetes and severe mental illness. A key issue this programme aimed to tackle was making self-management interventions accessible for people with severe mental illness, as this population has historically been excluded from, or struggled to access, standardised diabetes education programmes. The trial, which finished in November 2025, demonstrated that a one-to-one person-centred coaching model, tailored to individual needs, enabled people to engage with diabetes care and motivated people to make changes in their daily lives.
However, the landscape of diabetes and cardiovascular management is shifting rapidly. GLP-1 agonists, such as semaglutide, are fast becoming the gold standard treatment for type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular morbidity (in conjunction with self-management interventions). There is mounting evidence that these medications are safe and effective for people with severe mental illness, and may significantly reduce the metabolic risks associated with antipsychotic medication. Access to these medications for people with severe mental illness is severely limited, despite evidence of efficacy. In addition, in areas where the medication may be available, current care pathways are not designed to meet this population’s needs.
We will address this issue by co-designing optimised referral and care pathways for people with severe mental illness who would benefit from access to GLP-1 agonists. We will build on our previous research, demonstrating that when we take into consideration people’s needs and priorities, we can remove the barriers to active engagement in the management of physical health issues for people with severe mental illness. This should ultimately lead to more equitable and effective care and, finally, allow us to narrow the mortality gap.
Looking Ahead
Across school-based interventions, cutting-edge data science, and physical healthcare pathways, our hope is that the mental health work underway in York will make a tangible, lasting impact. Of course, we are only half the story! Our colleagues at the University of Sheffield, led by Dr. Emily Wood, are doing vital work on access to care models and mental health workforce sustainability. Stay tuned for their takeover in our next update!