Accelerating Impact

Accelerating better outcomes for young people's mental health

YPMH has developed the Understand : Innovate : Implement (U:I:I) methodology to turn research into practical, scalable interventions. These interventions aim to prevent, detect early and reduce mental health conditions, such as depression, in young people.

Despite significant scientific progress in understanding the biological, psychological and social factors that contribute to to mental ill health, rates of mental health conditions continue to rise – particularly among young people. Research is essential, but it is not sufficient on its own. Effective action requires transforming knowledge into real-world solutions that work across society.

Learn more about each stage:

Understand

Innovate

Implement

Challenges and barriers

Achieving better mental health outcomes for young people is complex. Multiple interrelated factors make it difficult to develop and deliver effective intervention at scale.

Key barriers include:

Complex risk factors

Mental health conditions result from the interplay of biological, psychological and social influences from early life onwards. The wide range of contributing factors – including genetics, family context, environment, social and other pressures, trauma and lifestyle – make it challenging to thoroughly understand how mental health conditions develop.

Range of potential interventions

There are many kinds of intervention, and different stages of support – including prevention, early detection, diagnosis, personalised management and treatment – each addressing different needs and operating within distinct regulatory environments.

Translating research into practice

Translating research into implementation-ready innovations involves multiple stages – from generating ideas, defining unmet needs and projects to address them, to selecting projects for investment, developing and validating the solutions, and ensuring that they can be used at scale. It also requires understanding user requirements, designing, testing and validating solutions within appropriate regulatory frameworks.

Portfolios of near-, medium- and long-term innovations, reflecting different levels of research of technology readiness, need to be managed for each care stage and for different organisational context, such as schools or public health.

Successful translation depends on cooperation between many actors, including innovators, end users, implementors, funders and regulators.

Implementation challenges

Successful implementation can require:

Individual behaviour change – people need the motivation, capability and opportunity to adopt and sustain new behaviours.
Organisations – from schools to healthcare settings, need resources, skills and structures to implement and sustain change. In many cases, organisational resources, capability and capacity are limited, and implementation approaches must reflect these constraints.
System-wide change – organisations across the mental health ecosystem need to work together ensure coherent prevention, early detection and personalised management and treatment.
Policy and regulatory change – action is not only needed within health policy, but also in relation to societal and social risk factors such as food and nutrition, safety, education and employment opportunities, housing quality, digital environments, community cohesion and access to green spaces.

How YPMH overcomes these barriers

At YPMH, we address these challenges by combining:

Structured, research-based methods to ensure robust, effective and efficient problem solving; ideation, evaluation, prioritisation and management of innovations; intervention design, development and evaluation; and implementation and change management for individuals and organisations.
Facilitated engagement of stakeholders to build understanding of stakeholders’ needs and perspectives; generate and validate ideas, unmet needs and projects to address them; design impactful interventions and ways of working within and between organisations; and support collaborative change management, helping organisations move towards a better – sustainable – mental health future.

This combination enables the development of practical, scalable, evidence-informed solutions that improve mental health outcomes for young people.

Our methodology

Using this methodology, we guide organisations and individuals across the mental health ecosystem to:

Understand

In a systematic way:

The social, psychological and biological factors and mechanisms that can lead to mental health conditions
Where to best intervene to prevent, detect early, and support recovery and remission

Innovate

Turning understanding into actionable solutions

This includes:

Identifying, prioritising, developing and validating innovations to meet clear unmet needs that are ready for implementation
Building portfolios of innovations for:
- Each stage of care, from prevention, through early detection and diagnosis to personalised management and treatment
- Organisations, including:
  - Organisations in a societal settings, such as educational institutions, employers and prisons
  - Health and social care organisations, including public health to primary, secondary and tertiary care, as well as social care
Policy and regulation

Implement

Getting innovations into practical use across society, and widely used by:

Individuals, families and carers – helping to:

Develop motivation – the need or reason to take action
Build capability – the skills and knowledge to act
Provide opportunity – the circumstances and support that make change possible
Offer tools – resources to guide and sustain behaviour change

Organisations – helping to:

Clarify mental health goals and priorities
Define problems and requirements for solutions, and how they are to be used
Design conceptual and detailed operating models
- Conceptual – stakeholder-agreed model describing how the innovation will work in practice
- Detailed – definition of capabilities (processes and resources), capacity and competences needed to achieve objectives
Develop the processes, resources and materials required for implementation
Deploy, refine and operate interventions to deliver intended outputs and outcomes
Review the operating model periodically to integrate improvements and ensure alignment with other interventions

Policy makers and regulators:

We continue to explore approaches to support policy and regulatory change.

Working together for change

Improving mental health outcomes requires action at every level. Through collaborations with organisations in education, healthcare, policy and research, YPMH helps accelerate innovation and implementation across the entire mental health ecosystem.