Wellcome Prize for Mental Health: Transform Lives with New Interventions

About the role

The Wellcome Prize for Mental Health Science offers US$1 million for innovative interventions in anxiety, depression, and psychosis. Finalists receive US$250,000 and support for adoption, with applications due by September 18, 2026.

Responsibilities

• Develop a new approach to treating a mental health challenge that promises to improve on existing treatments in terms of effectiveness, side effect profile or precision.
• Informed by robust research and lived experience participation.
• Effective at treating the mental health challenge it targets and at demonstrating improvement on clinically relevant endpoints, supported by a high standard of evidence.
• Demonstrate a viable route to integration and sustained delivery within relevant clinical or care systems, with the capacity to reach the intended population.

Requirements

• Must be in the areas of anxiety, depression and psychosis and have the potential to transform people’s lives.
• Can be pharmacological, psychological, social or digital.
• Must be novel, in concept or application, going considerably beyond established knowledge or routine practice.
• Grounded in a strong scientific and theoretical rationale.
• Demonstrated improvement on clinically relevant endpoints such as symptoms and functioning, or secondary endpoints such as quality of life.
• Supported by evidence from an appropriately powered randomised controlled trial, or an equivalent rigorous study design.
• The most recent clinical data must be published in a peer-reviewed journal or verifiable through a recognised repository and dated within the past five years.
• Should be at an early stage of implementation and not yet be adopted as standard of care in more than two countries.
• Show meaningful involvement of people with lived experience throughout the intervention’s lifecycle, supported by clear evidence.

Qualifications

• Any team based at a university, research institute or hospital, government or not-for-profit organisation or small and medium-sized enterprise (SME).
• Any team located in any country, excluding those on our restricted list.
• Must be the research group that discovered or invented the intervention.

Skills

• Ability to develop a new approach to treating a mental health challenge that promises to improve on existing treatments in terms of effectiveness, side effect profile or precision.
• Robust research and lived experience participation.
• Effective at treating the mental health challenge it targets and at demonstrating improvement on clinically relevant endpoints, supported by a high standard of evidence.
• Demonstrate a viable route to integration and sustained delivery within relevant clinical or care systems, with the capacity to reach the intended population.

Benefits

• An expenses-paid invitation to attend and speak at a mental health science symposium and the prize gala ceremony in London in June 2027.
• A tailored development programme offering practical support to help advance interventions towards adoption and policy integration.
• Opportunities to engage with influential leaders, including policymakers, clinicians, healthcare providers, people with lived experience of mental health conditions and media.
• Beyond financial backing, the prize will provide visibility, connections and practical support to help winning interventions progress towards adoption and policy integration.

Pay

• One overall Prize winner will receive US$1 million.
• Three runners-up will be awarded US$250,000 each.

Schedule

• Applications due by September 18th, 2026.
• Prize gala ceremony in London in June 2027.

Organization

WELLCOME