We are a powerhouse of mental health research and education.
We work across boundaries, combining our expertise in neuroscience, psychiatry and big data to better understand and treat mental health disorders. Our academics have forged strong partnerships with the NHS, national government and the third sector to ensure we are connected to primary and social care communities in the UK. With most of our leading experts undertaking dual appointments as UCL researchers and NHS clinicians, we are working on the front-line, ensuring our research and education has patient outcomes at its heart.
1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem of some kind each year in England
Mind charity970 million people globally were living with a mental disorder in 2019.
World Health OrganizationSpotlight on anxiety
We are at the forefront of anxiety research, exploring how cognitive processes influence mental health.
Professor Oliver Robinson and the Anxiety Lab
Find out more about the work of The Anxiety Lab at UCL.
Meet Dr Gemma Lewis
Dr Gemma Lewis is a psychiatric epidemiologist, whose research focuses on the causes, treatment and prevention of depression and anxiety.
Princess of Wales and UCL academics take part in roundtable on childhood mental health
Professors Peter Fonagy and Eamon McCrory took part in roundtable discussions with the Princess of Wales to mark Mental Health Awareness Week.
Multidisciplinary thinking and collaboration
Our ethos of multidisciplinary thinking and collaboration means that staff from across UCL are engaged in a ‘super-field’ of mental health research and education. The UCL Institute of Mental Health integrates our vast mental health strengths, meaning we work beyond traditional boundaries to adopt a unique holistic approach to the global challenge of mental health. Our focus on biological, genetic, psychological and social factors allows us to address mental health from all disciplinary angles.
Meet Dr Rick Adams
Dr Rick Adams works across computer science and psychiatry, and discusses how he uses computational methods to investigate the complex workings of the mind.
Meet Professor Ilan Kelman
Professor Ilan Kelman investigates how climate change affects our mental health, working across both the UCL Institute for Global Health and the UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction.
Meet Dr Rochelle Burgess
Dr Rochelle Burgess, who leads research projects on a variety of topics linked to mental health in contexts of adversity, discusses how this research is improving the health of the public.
Our ‘lifespan’ approach to mental health
We address the full spectrum of lifelong mental health from childhood to old age. UCL is developing pioneering approaches to diagnosing and treating mental health conditions, from developmental disorders to mental health in older people and dementia. As a powerful interdisciplinary research community capable of tackling issues of scale and complexity at pace, we have a unique role to play in helping to turn the tide on this global crisis that impacts every stage of human life.
Meet Professor Essi Viding
Professor Essi Viding is a developmental psychologist with training in cognitive neuroscience and behavioural genetic approaches to mental health research.
Meet Professor Gill Livingston
Professor Gill Livingston is a professor in psychiatry of older people, investigating mental health difficulties in older adults and the effect on their families.
Meet Professor Roz Shafran
Professor Roz Shafran is a clinical psychologist and professor of translational psychology at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health.
Big data
We apply cutting-edge computational modelling and epidemiological approaches to provide a broad longitudinal approach to mental health. UCL has unrivalled access to NHS clinical databases and national population health research cohorts, which gives depth and context to our work. It also helps us understand the impact of mental health on social, economic and health outcomes across generations rather than looking at clinical data in isolation.
Meet Dr Joseph Hayes
Dr Joseph Hayes focuses on the use of large electronic health record, register and ecological momentary assessment data to understand the aetiology, treatment and prognosis of mental illness.
Subjective experience of childhood adversity linked to mental health problems
A meta-analysis by researchers within the UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences shows that personal accounts of childhood adversity show a stronger association with mental health problems.
Generational inequalities in mental health accelerated during Covid-19 pandemic
Core symptoms of anxiety and depression were more common among younger generations compared to older age groups during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Delivering better outcomes for all
UCL is committed to actively engaging with people with lived experiences of mental health conditions in our research. We have a strong heritage of primary and social care participation to ensure a contemporary, co-production approach. We are world leaders in excellence in clinical practice - many of researchers also hold dual roles as clinicians working on the front line of the NHS, ensuring our research and education have patient outcomes at their heart.
Meet Professor Jessica Deighton
Professor Jessica Deighton investigates the relationship between social, emotional and educational outcomes for children and the effectiveness of interventions to improve mental health.
Eliminating sexual violence could reduce teenage mental ill health
The prevalence of serious mental health problems among 17-year-olds could drop by as much as 16.8% for girls and 8.4% for boys if they had not experienced sexual assault and harassment.
Young people showed resilience and adaptive coping strategies emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic
While challenging Black and mixed ethnic young people’s mental health, pandemic experiences helped develop positive responses to adversity.
Training the next generation
UCL is the national leader in training mental health professionals. We offer an unrivalled breadth of mental health Master’s programmes based in London. These are led by renowned experts, government advisers and NHS clinicians and ensure we build capacity for mental health research and treatment in the future.
VIDEO | My experience as a PhD student in mental health
Ava Mason is a PhD student in the Division of Psychiatry, interested in understanding the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying trauma and psychosis.
Q&A with Jack Krull
Jack is an American student on the Psychology with Education BSc, class of 2019. He talks about mental health and discovering a love for psychology.
Meet Dr Vanessa Putz
Dr Vanessa Putz is Programme Co-Director of the UCL Postgraduate Diploma in Child and Adolescent Psychology and Neuroscience in Practice.
The overarching aims of our research on mental health and illness is to address clinical problems in order to achieve benefits for patients and public health, using insights from basic science. This research is organised into the following areas:
- old age psychiatry;
- neuroscience and mental health;
- epidemiology and applied clinical research;
- palliative care.
Research in the areas of clinical, educational and health psychology has a strong focus on understanding the causes of and mechanisms that underlie mental disorders, behavioural problems, and educational difficulties. This is complemented by a major objective to develop and evaluate innovative interventions.
The increasing focus on the mental health problems of children and young people will be a key focus over the next period, strengthened by the link with the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families. The development and evaluation of novel interventions (including digital interventions) in mental health in adults, neurodevelopmental disorders, psycho-pharmacology and older people remain key priority areas and will be enhanced by the development of the Institute of Mental Health and continuing cross-Faculty and cross-institutional links with experts in psychiatry, human-computer interaction, cognitive neuroscience and education.
The interdisciplinary research strategy of our significant research capacity in human neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience is to study how the human brain generates behaviour, thoughts and feelings and how these processes break down in neurological and psychiatric disorders, combining cognitive psychology, computational neuroscience, anatomical and functional neuroimaging and neuropsychology.
UCL's Grand Challenge of Mental Health & Wellbeing's mission is to become a beacon for improvements in mental health and wellbeing through transformative cross-disciplinary research, practice and partnerships.
The Max Planck-UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing, a £6M joint investment between UCL and the Max Planck Society, opened in 2014. The Centre award was renewed 2019-24 (£2.5M) and it also has an industrial agreement with Telefonica (£1.6M) to develop app-based tools for early detection and monitoring of depression and anxiety. Its scientific goal is to study the causes of psychiatric disorders and individual differences in cognitive development, with an emphasis on adulthood and old age.