Jennifer Lau, Professor of Youth Resilience and Co-Director of the Youth Resilience Unit at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health, is heading one of the five research hubs to be established by the Medical Research Council (MRC) as part of a national initiative to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and support for people experiencing severe mental illness (SMI).
The new £22.5 million mental health platform will bring together researchers from a wide range of disciplines and institutions. The hub at Queen Mary will focus on ‘building recovery and resilience in severe mental illness: leveraging the role of social determinants in illness trajectories and interventions’. It will generate new knowledge on the role of social determinants in influencing the course and outcomes of SMIs, and how ‘protective’ social factors can be used to build resilience and aid recovery in people with SMIs.
Professor Lau said: “Our community in East London is one of the most diverse in the country. It is also one that faces major health inequalities affecting peoples’ accesses to services and support. We want to look at how things like the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live and age influence the journeys and outcomes of people living with severe mental illness – and how we can change those things to lead to better health outcomes.”
In 2020, Barts Charity awarded £2.8m funding to the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary to establish the Youth Resilience Unit (YRU). East London has the youngest population in the UK and has some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country, with many disproportionally affected by poor mental health. The unit is the first of its kind in the UK and aims to understand how to equip young people with the tools and resources to overcome depression and anxiety.
The research hub will partner with King’s College London; City, University of London; Brunel University of London; Warwick Medical School; University of Liverpool; University of Newcastle; and the University of Plymouth.
More information about the new mental health research platform is available on the UKRI website.
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