Response

Critchley et al^{Reference Critchley, Tracy, Malhi, Alexander, Baldwin and Cavanagh1} point to challenges pertaining to academic psychiatry. I agree there are challenges at various levels to academic psychiatry and to academic mental health more generally. However, the editorial gives the impression that nothing is being done to address the challenge of falling numbers of academic psychiatrists when in fact there are a number of funding initiatives that I hope readers and the authors of the editorial will take advantage of and support. Ambitious goals for reducing mental health problems in children and young people, addressing premature mortality, developing new and improved interventions and improving choice and access were set for mental health research in the UK for 2020–2030 in a document published by the Department of Health and Social care with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Medical Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, Wellcome Trust, and the charities MQ and Mental Health Research UK.^{Reference Wykes, Bell, Carr, Coldham, Gilbody and Hotopf2} As a result, there has been a considerable boost in funding for mental health research in the UK, including the following.

First, the UK government’s Office for Life Sciences and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) have launched the Mental Health Mission, which has led to a massive investment (£42.7 million) in capacity building for academia, from PhDs to fellowships for National Health Service (NHS) psychiatrists to undertake academic work, and created infrastructure from informatics to primary care-facing clinics. This is a time-limited investment, a massive opportunity, which we as a profession must try to back and develop so that the investment is continued.³

Second, the NIHR has developed the Mental Health Research Group (MHRG) initiative to boost the development of new academic centres or existing centres that are underdeveloped in deprived parts of the country.⁴ There are development awards and leadership awards worth up to £2.5 million per centre over 2 years, leading to full MHRG status for a centre, offering £10 million over 5 years. The intention is to fund 10 full MHRGs. This programme in particular needs more senior academic psychiatrists working in applied mental health to act as mentors for these up-and-coming centres.

Third, the Medical Research Council holds, three times a year, a well-funded call for proposals in neuroscience and mental health.

Fourth, the Wellcome Trust, whose programmes are international rather than just UK focused, revamped their funding scheme in 2023 so that mental health is one of their five research areas for funding, and there are more opportunities for research into depression, anxiety, psychosis and other mental disorders in both adults and children and young people.⁵

Academic psychiatry also has access to a range of other funding opportunities that other specialties can apply for from all these major funders of research. Mental health is often prioritised in these general calls. For instance, the number of potential Academic Clinical Fellow posts for academic psychiatrists is increasing from 29 in 2023 to 33 in 2025 in England.^6,7 All the funders from time to time run specific calls for funding or training opportunities.

I would conclude that there is a recognition of the decline in numbers of academic psychiatrists in the UK, evidence that all the major funders of research in the UK understand our value, and there is the political will at a national level to do something materially to improve the situation. There are the opportunities to develop a new academic psychiatry workforce with a range of other mental health, methodology and neuroscience colleagues. However, we have to attract medical students into this area of work and support these schemes and the staff going into them. Locally we need to persuade universities and NHS organisations of the value of academic psychiatry and academic mental health more generally in the face of competing demands so that these funding opportunities are taken advantage of and have a long-term future. A lot will depend on whether NHS organisations and universities value the important role clinical academics in psychiatry can play in bringing about evidence-based NHS transformation that the government expects to see in both mental and physical health.⁸