Success for inaugural mental health innovation event at the IfM

Much excellent mental health research already exists, covering causes and characteristics of mental disorders, as well as proven and possibly efficacious interventions for healthy minds. The aim of the event was to leverage this existing knowledge and join up expertise from separate fields to create better ways to prevent and treat mental illness.

The IfM’s Peter Templeton, Dr Nicky Athanassopoulou, Dr Florian Urmetzer, Professor Tim Minshall, and Professor Peter Jones from the Department for Psychiatry led and delivered the day’s sessions which covered the case for action to improve mental health outcomes, the multidisciplinary and interconnected nature of mental health ‘cause and effect’, innovation management strategies, and the IfM’s Ecosystem Mapping and Roadmapping tools.

“Feedback from delegates regarding the approaches for improving mental health co-developed between IfM, IfM Engage and YPMH was very positive,” said Peter Templeton, Founder of YPMH. “The responses showed that the structured methods were perceived as being ‘very to extremely useful’ both within participants’ organisations and across their ecosystems.”

“What a fantastic day!” said Charlotte Catignani, Innovation and Partner Engagement Manager at YPMH. “There was so much energy in the room, and I was delighted we had attendees from a broad range of actors across the ecosystem, all working together to transform mental health outcomes. From the feedback and group discussion it is clear there is an appetite amongst participants to reconvene and they gave a number of suggestions of topics and activities for future events; there’s no shortage of content to cover. We are now working on what the format for future events might look like, and investigating options for funding future events, so watch this space for updates.”