William Templeton Foundation for Young People’s Mental Health (YPMH) is thrilled to announce its participation in the Mental Health Catalyst, a major initiative supported by Wellcome and led by the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) through its knowledge transfer company, IfM Engage.
The goal of the Mental Health Catalyst is to speed up the identification, development, and adoption of new and improved interventions for individuals with conditions associated with clinically significant depressed mood.
For YPMH, this marks a significant step in fulfilling our mission to transform research into practical solutions that can prevent and reduce mental illness, improve outcomes, and help more people recover and maintain their mental well-being.
Translating research into real-world impact
Clinically depressed mood has immense consequences for individuals, families, societies, and economies. It hinders education, employment, physical health, and relationships, contributes to disability and recurring illnesses, and causes significant economic losses. It also adds pressure to already overburdened healthcare and social systems.
While scientific understanding of depressed mood has advanced, progress in translating that knowledge into interventions that can be developed, adopted, and sustained at scale has been slow and inconsistent.
The Mental Health Catalyst was created to bridge this gap. The current four-year program, Catalyst 1.0, will use a structured Understand : Innovate : Implement approach to synthesize evidence, identify high-potential intervention opportunities, understand barriers to innovation and adoption at scale, and create a Mission Map to align future research, innovation, investment, and implementation.
The program brings together experts in innovation management, evidence synthesis, lived experience engagement, global mental health, and mental health translation.
Collaboration with IfM and IfM Engage
YPMH’s participation in the Catalyst builds on a collaboration with IfM and IfM Engage that began in 2019.
Together, we have applied innovation management, roadmapping, ecosystem mapping, and systems approaches to tackle one of the most difficult challenges in mental health: translating social, psychological, and biological research into practical, scalable interventions.
This collaboration has progressed through several stages.
First, YPMH and the Aviva Foundation jointly funded research synthesis work at the IfM, contributing to a multidisciplinary understanding of depression in young people. This included the publication of “Biological, Psychological, and Social Determinants of Depression: A Review of Recent Literature in Brain Sciences” in 2021 and “Changing Hearts, Changing Minds” earlier that year. This work integrated evidence on the intersecting biological, psychological, and social factors that can contribute to depression, such as stress, inflammation, cognitive processes, genetic vulnerability, and adverse life circumstances.
The collaboration then moved from understanding to innovation. YPMH and IfM Engage engaged with over 150 stakeholders across the mental health ecosystem to identify vulnerability factors, mechanisms, and intervention opportunities across prevention, early detection, diagnosis, and treatment. This work resulted in the publication of “Changing Minds, Changing Lives” in 2023, which outlined long-term visions for improving young people’s mental well-being in families, schools, healthcare systems, and other contexts.
Most recently, the collaboration focused on developing and testing methods to translate research into effective, user-accepted, and scalable interventions. This included the development of the Understand : Innovate : Implement methodology, piloting the approach in schools and healthcare settings, supporting the development of a mental health strategy for an academy trust of 20 schools, and initiating the development of the Mental Health Catalyst.
The Understand : Innovate : Implement methodology is a fundamental component of the Catalyst.
A collaborative program
IfM Engage will lead program design and delivery, applying structured innovation, roadmapping, ecosystem analysis, and strategic prioritization methods developed through IfM research.
The Cochrane Evidence Synthesis Unit Germany / UK will lead the program’s systematic evidence synthesis and pathway mapping work, integrating evidence across biological, psychological, and socio-ecological domains.
Generation Mental Health will assist in designing and coordinating lived experience engagement, ensuring that the perspectives of individuals affected by depressed mood inform the Catalyst’s work.
The Mental Health Innovation Network, hosted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, will support global stakeholder engagement and dissemination, including engagement across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
YPMH will bring its experience in expediting the translation of research into practical, scalable interventions to prevent and reduce mental illness throughout the lifespan.
Peter Templeton, Founder of YPMH and Project Director of the Mental Health Catalyst at IfM Engage, said:
“The Mental Health Catalyst embodies the kind of work YPMH was formed to support: bringing together rigorous evidence, structured innovation, and practical implementation to transform research into solutions that can improve lives. We are excited to collaborate with IfM Engage, Cochrane, Generation Mental Health, the Mental Health Innovation Network, and Wellcome to identify and accelerate intervention opportunities with the potential for real impact.”
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