“Science doesn’t respect administrative boundaries” – rethinking mental health, research and care: Q&A with Professor Allan Young

More than a billion people worldwide live with a mental health condition, yet mental health remains underfunded in both care and research. Ahead of World Mental Health Day, Professor Allan Young, a psychiatrist and Head of the Department of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London, argues for a more holistic view of health and sets out how science can change the lives of those most in need.

“One of the really welcome developments over the past generation has been the involvement of people with lived experience in the research process,” said Professor Young. “People with lived experience are now full partners in research. They help us shape the questions.” He also discusses the biggest challenges facing the field, Imperial's research, and what this year's Nobel Prize means for psychiatry.

Let’s start with the big picture. What would you say are the three key mental health challenges, both globally and here in the United Kingdom?

Well, the first thing to say is that mental ill health is a challenge globally. If you look at allthe research, it shows that mental ill health is present in every culture and every part of the world. Furthermore, it's one of the leading causes of ill health. In sub-Saharan Africa and some other parts of the world, there's also quite a big health-related burden from infectious and communicable diseases. Generally however, mental ill health is one of the leading causes of mortality and health-related disability everywhere. 

If you think about major challenges, there is, of course, stigma and prejudice, which I think we've made some progress in reducing in the UK and in European, Australasian and North American countries. Despite this, cultural attitudes to mental health are still a big issue in many parts of the world. It's often regarded as shameful. People still think about demonic possession, moral failure and so on. This is a major thing to overturn, and it would really mean educating all people about the nature of these disorders. 

Another challenge is the detection of mental health disorders and the adequate provision of services and treatment. Even in Europe, we find that, for example, only a small proportion of major depressive disorder is even detected, perhaps only 25%, and adequate treatment is even rarer. 

There's a third problem, which is educating the public about mental health in general. Mental health symptoms, whether anxiety or even transient low mood, are very common. But we have to help people understand that there are also particularly severe and enduring mental health disorders, and that we really should be prioritising our resources for the most needy and the most vulnerable.

Let's narrow it down a bit. What is the biggest misconception people have about mental health?

I think one of the biggest misconceptions is related simply to the nature of health: the separation of mental health from physical health. We even see that in our hospitals, where we have hospitals for physical health and separate mental health hospitals. In fact, I think there's just health, and everybody has health in both domains. Of course, the two are very intimately connected. Every illness is psychosomatic, and not in a pejorative way. If you have a heart attack, that has profound psychological consequences. Similarly, if you have severe mental ill health, we know that it impacts on things like your cardiovascular mortality. So, I think we need to start thinking about health more in the round, because all of the evidence shows that what we separate as mental and physical health are, in fact, closely linked and occur in us all.

The four UK nations measure mental health in different ways, but the trend looks similar. In England, the proportion of adults aged 16 to 64 with a common mental health condition has risen from 17.6% in 2007 to 22.6%. In Scotland, 22% of adults now show signs of a possible psychiatric disorder, compared with 14–19% between 2003 and 2019 And in Wales, average mental wellbeing reached its lowest point in 2022–23 and has stayed there. What lies behind the rise?

When I was a resident trainee in psychiatry about 40 years ago, I was taught in one of my introductory lectures that if you went out into the streets of a major city and asked people about mental health symptoms, about three quarters would endorse at least one, whether feeling anxious, down or anything else. And of course, these symptoms don't very often tally up to enduring syndromes. So mental health symptoms are extremely common.

What the Royal College of Psychiatrists and others have said is that we should have parity of esteem, where mental health problems are treated in the same way as other common, severe health problems such as cardiovascular disease and cancer and receive appropriately proportionate funding. Professor Allan Young Head of the Department of Brain Sciences | Imperial College London

I think what's happened is not that there's been a rise in the rates of mental illness per se, but that we're much better at admitting to it and ascertaining it. That's the key message.

But we shouldn't see mental health as a simple single entity. There will be lots of people with transient mental health symptoms which resolve, but we must really be aware that there is a proportion of people with severe and enduring mental health problems. Again, I would stress that these individuals are the most poorly served, not only by our health service provision, but also in terms of research funding devoted to understanding these disorders and finding new ways of treating them better.

I think this applies across the board. There are perhaps places which are worse in some way or other. In Scotland, for example, there seems to be a much higher rate of death related to drug overdose than elsewhere in Europe or in other parts of the UK. But generally, these problems are universal.

Let's turn to economic background. Across the UK, people in more deprived areas tend to face more serious mental health problems. In Northern Ireland, for example, 24% of adults in the most deprived areas show signs of a possible mental health problem, compared with 14% in the least deprived. What would be the best response, and what is the biggest barrier to proper care for people facing this kind of economic exclusion?

Mental ill health, and indeed all ill health, should be thought of in a bio-psychosocial framework. That means looking at biological, psychological and social causes. Of course, the balance between those three domains will differ for individual problems, and also for individuals with different problems. But I don't think there's a single major disorder which does not have a bio-psychosocial aspect.

So I think we should be looking at environmental causes of mental ill health. We should be looking at psychological features, and we should also be looking at biological ones. Very often you find that people who criticise mental health research actually caricature what's being done, saying that it's all biological, or all social, or all psychological. But the framework is the bio-psychosocial one, and that's where we should start our consideration of these issues.

Let’s look ahead, though. The WHO estimates that more than a billion people worldwide live with a mental health condition, yet governments spend, on average, around 2% of their health budgets on mental health. If you could set the global research agenda for the next decade, what would come first?

I think priorities for both research and health service provision should reflect the burden of disease. For the last 30 or 40 years, we have had quite good ways of working out that burden. It's a product of how common a disorder is and how much impact it has on people's lives, death rates and so on.

Now, relative to its health burden, mental ill health is very much underfunded, both in the provision of care and in research. What the Royal College of Psychiatrists and others have said is that we should have parity of esteem, where mental health problems are treated in the same way as other common, severe health problems such as cardiovascular disease and cancer and receive appropriately proportionate funding. I don't think there's any argument that would really refute that, but it seems a very tough idea to put into practice.

Let's look at Imperial’s own contribution. What do you see as the most innovative directions in mental health research here, in our department and across the university?

I think one of the key things happening is that medical science, and science more broadly in ways that may impact medicine, is making the most astonishing advances. For example, we're seeing changes in artificial intelligence. We're seeing changes in our understanding of genetics and of how the human body works and so on. All of this is impacting health in ways that are difficult to predict.

A good example is perhaps the weight-loss drugs, the GLP-1 agonists, which were to some extent developed from work done at Imperial. Endocrinologists at Hammersmith Hospital. Of course, they are very much recognised for weight loss, which is why they're so widely used. But we've also discovered, almost as an unintended or unanticipated consequence, that they may be beneficial for depression and anxiety, and, very interestingly, even for excessive alcohol use.

So, I think the real key for the future is science and its application to these problems. That's what Imperial is all about: discovering, by doing the best possible science, and applying it for the good of humanity. We simply want to do that for mental ill health, just as Imperial does for many other areas of human activity.

If you had to point to one or two areas where Imperial is changing the future of mental health treatment, what would they be? Psychedelics, bipolar disorder, lithium, or something else?

Imperial is, of course, one of the world's leading centres for psychedelic research and innovative treatments, so we're interested in new treatments. We're also very much involved in convergent science. For example, you may have a combination of new therapeutic approaches, neurostimulation, data science, digital monitoring and so on.

Science doesn’t respect administrative boundaries, and the best science is done when the people who should work together actually do so to solve problems. I think we're really quite good at this at Imperial. Professor Allan Young Head of the Department of Brain Sciences | Imperial College London

I think this is the type of approach that will really advance treatment. It will also help us to understand old treatments like lithium, which is very effective for many people, but as yet we simply don't understand how it works. These new scientific advances may enable us to understand better how the drugs that work act in the brain, and what their mechanism is and thus enable us to develop new and even better therapies.

Beyond new treatments, are there areas of the Department's work that you feel deserve more attention?

The department looks at many areas of major mental ill health, such as addictions. We also have a big interest in intellectual disability, which is the most neglected area. Our Division of Psychiatry and the wider Department of Brain Sciences address many common, impactful and burdensome problems. Again, what we do is try to apply science to these issues for the benefit of humanity.

Some of the most exciting advances happen where disciplines meet. How does Brain Sciences work with engineers, AI specialists and other colleagues across Imperial, and is there room for more?

Science doesn’t respect administrative boundaries, and the best science is done when the people who should work together actually do so to solve problems. I think we're really quite good at this at Imperial. We've got work going on between Brain Sciences and various other departments in the medical school and we're also collaborating with other parts of the university, particularly bioengineering and life sciences, and with other leading centres outside it.

So, we're moving into an era of real cooperation in science, which is what we need. We're going to use all the tools in the toolkit, and we need all the people who can potentially contribute to work together. Imperial, I think, is very well placed to do this.

And what about the clinical side? One of the Department's key strengths seems to be access to real clinical work and to a diverse population of patients.

Imperial clearly has some of the best science in the world, but there's very good science going on elsewhere too, for example in the United States and in China. But Imperial also has two other things. First, we have the NHS, which is not available as a partner in many other countries, certainly not in the United States or China. Working together with the NHS gives us access to the clinical coalface and to populations of people whom we can try to help as best we can. Second, we're extremely lucky to be in London, a city of more than 10 million people with a concentration of world class Universities. It's very well integrated, both in terms of the health service and in areas such as data science and electronic health records. So, I think the combination of all these factors means that Imperial is, in multiple ways, one of the best-positioned universities in the world to make scientific advances.

There is a lot of concern about young people's mental health right now. In England, the proportion of 16 to 24 year olds with a common mental health condition rose from 17.5% in 2007 to 25.8% in 2023/4. Are there particular groups or stages of life that matter most to you in terms of research and the challenges they face?

We think about mental ill health throughout the lifespan, starting even before conception and then with the disorders which have their onset very early. Intellectual disability, for example, is usually evident in early childhood, and so is autism. Then we have the adult disorders, which tend to begin in adolescence. And finally, we have the neurodegenerative disorders and other psychiatric disorders related to old age, which emerge in the latter part of life.

People with lived experience are now full partners in research. They help us shape the questions, understand how best to address them, and think about the results of research, their implementation and how this pans out to help people. Professor Allan Young Head of the Department of Brain Sciences | Imperial College London

There is, of course, particular concern about young people's mental health now. I think this is partly because we are picking these problems up more. But many people are also worried, and I share this concern, about the pernicious effects of social media and digital communications, which may be amplifying mental health problems. So, I think it's both: we're uncovering what was always there, but social media may actually be making it worse. And this happens in diverse ways, including through gambling.

This week's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for optogenetics. Deisseroth is also a psychiatrist. For readers without a science background, what is the core of this discovery, and why does it matter for understanding mood and the brain?

Karl Deisseroth trained as a psychiatrist. However, he received the award for work in  basic neuroscience related to optogenetics, which means genetically manipulating neurons so that they respond to light. With this, you can turn circuits in the living brain off and on by exposing them to light. It's a quite amazingly elegant research tool. It allows us to understand brain function, and it will eventually lead to mapping circuitry and provide a platform for future therapeutic developments. It also shows that, for our field, there is an interplay between all different forms of science, which will ultimately reach the point of helping the people who suffer from these problems.

To finish, this year's World Mental Health Day theme is "Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change". How should people with lived experience shape research priorities? Can they help you ask better questions?

In my view, one of the most welcome developments over the past generation has been the involvement of people with lived experience in the research process. People with lived experience are now full partners in research. They help us shape the questions, understand how best to address them, and think about the results of research, their implementation and how this pans out to help people. I work with many colleagues who bring lived experience to the process. As I say, I think this immeasurably benefits the whole process, and it is actually one of the most important developments of the last generation. If this article has raised anything difficult for you, please know that support is available.

Imperial staff can contact a Mental Health First Aider, and students can contact the Student Counselling and Mental Health Advice Service. Outside Imperial, Samaritans are available free, day or night, on 116 123, or you can text SHOUT to 85258. If you are in immediate danger, call 999.

Learn more about mental health support for staff and students.

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1. WHO, Over a billion people living with mental health conditions – services require urgent scale-up, World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/news/item/02-09-2025-over-a-billion-people-living-with-mental-health-conditions-services-require-urgent-scale-up, 02.09.2025;
2. UK Clinical Research Collaboration , UK Health Research Analysis 2022, UKCRC / MRC (UKRI), https://hrcsonline.net/reports/analysis-reports/uk-health-research-analysis-2022/
3. -B. Hazo i in., National funding for mental health research in Finland, France, Spain and the United Kingdom, European Neuropsychopharmacology 27(9): 892–899, https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/82339, 2017
4. M. Patel, Meet Professor Allan Young, the new Head of the Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London News, https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/268155/meet-professor-allan-young-head-department/, 2025
5. WFMH, World Mental Health Day 2026: Announcing This Year's Theme, World Federation for Mental Health, https://wfmh.global/news/2026.26-08-11_world-mental-health-day-2026, 11.08.2026
6. Optogenetics researchers win Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Chemical & Engineering News, https://cen.acs.org/people/nobel-prize/nobel-2026-physiology-medicine/104/web/2026/10, 05.10.2026