Developing a mental health databank
We’re launching a tender to find an organisation to work with us to develop a mental health databank.
The mental health team at Wellocome want to find out what helps to prevent or address anxiety and depression in 14–24 year olds. So we want to create a databank that can store data about the individual, and detailed information about aspects of that person’s life that may relate to preventing or addressing anxiety and depression. This involves trying to capture not just what people do but also why they do it.
The first two years of this project are for us to prototype and scope out how a databank might work, how we can collect robust data, and give access to scientists and other researchers to analyse. After the two years, we have criteria on whether we carry on developing the databank.
It’s exciting that we’re finally here. I’ve been working with the mental health team since just before Christmas, and in that time, we’ve done a lot of work to develop and prioritise the objectives for the databank and for how we want to work.
A key piece of work has been around the best bets for what the core components of what might constitute effective interventions. Cat Sebastian, the mental health team evidence lead, has written an article about core components which is a useful reference. These core components will directly influence what we measure in the databank.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the different people who will use the databank, and their needs. And as a team we’ve decided to focus on making sure the databank will hold data that is useful to the researchers who will analyse the data, as we think this is the most important reason for building the databank.
Other key things we will be investigating in the next 2 years are:
- How to develop a governance model that gives more control to the individuals who put their data in the databank
- Ensuring a global reach, we are looking for a databank that can hold data from individuals from varied geographies and in low-resource settings
- Working with a partner who we can learn alongside, iterating our ideas, and the databank itself as we make progress
You can see our request for proposals on wellcome.ac.uk. The deadline for submitting an expression of interest is 8 June 2020.
