This award will fund projects to advance our understanding of how heat impacts anxiety, depression and psychosis in the most impacted groups globally through biological, psychological and/or social mechanisms.

Successful applications will propose translational opportunities for climate-resilient solutions and/or mental health interventions.

Overview

Lead applicant career stage: Early-career researcher, Mid-career researcher, Established researcher
Administering organisation location: Anywhere in the world (apart from mainland China and countries that are the target of international sanctions)
Frequency: One-off
Funding amount: £1 - 3 million per project
Funding duration: 3 - 5 years
Coapplicants: Accepted

Upcoming application stage

Full details of the award are published and the call opens to applications: Week commencing 30 September 2024

Join our funding webinar

Learn more about this award and how to apply from our team.

Submit questions ahead of the webinar on Slido using #HeatMentalHealth.

A recording of the webinar will be made available on this page.

9 October 2024, 9:30 - 10:30 BST

Who can apply

To apply for this award, teams must bring together mental health and climate expertise as well as additional expertise as relevant. Consistent with our approach to mental health research, we expect research teams to include relevant lived experience of mental health problems, unless there is a strong justification for not doing so. We are open to any methods of involvement that teams choose. However, it is expected that lived experience expertise is involved in the most appropriate and ethical ways to inform multiple aspects and stages of the proposed research project.

Review our guidance on how to involve people with lived experience of mental health challenges in your research.

Is your research right for this call?

We expect proposed research projects to:

focus on heat as a stressor of relevance to climate change
focus on anxiety, depression and/or psychosis
focus on mechanisms underpinning the relationship between heat and mental health
consider and clearly describe the potential impact of the proposed project and how, if successful, it would contribute to translational work (either directly or over time) supporting real-world application
include mental health expertise as well as climate expertise

We expect applications to:

include relevant lived experience expertise of anxiety, depression and/or psychosis on the project team, unless there is a strong justification for not doing so
appropriately reference evidence for the association between heat and the mental health outcome of choice
focus on communities most affected by heat and/or mental health challenges
propose methods that will uncover causal insights concerning the mechanisms underpinning the relationship between heat and mental health

Projects with human participants must use, as a minimum, one or more of our recommended common measures in mental health research in the collection of new data. Teams may also collect data using any other measure(s).

Is your organisation right for this call?

Your administering organisation can be a:

higher education institution
research institute
non-academic healthcare organisation
not-for-profit or non-governmental research organisation

Coapplicants and collaborators can be based at commercial organisations.

Read about the different applicant roles at Wellcome.

Key dates

Application process timeline

You must submit your application by 17:00 GMT on the deadline day. We don’t accept late applications.

Week commencing 30 September 2024

Full details of the award are published and the call opens to applications

9 October 2024, 9:30 - 10:30 BST

Funding webinar - Register for the webinar

21 January 2025

Application deadline

Climate and Mental Health Award: Uncovering mechanisms between heat and mental health