The Government’s Get Britain Working white paper on reversing recent trends around unemployment makes it clear the role that mental ill-health plays in limiting people’s ability to work. 

From its mention in the second paragraph of the foreword – and 33 times subsequently, more than any other health condition – it is impossible to miss how much focus the paper puts on the importance of fixing our collective mental health to boost society’s productivity. 

As the paper examines the drivers of unemployment in the UK in detail, the reasons for this focus become clear. Mental health is now the largest work-limiting health condition among those aged 44 and younger. The number of young people who report that their mental health limits the amount or type of work they can do has risen by more than 400% over the past decade. 

So – what has gone wrong? And how could the NHS work with employers and other partners to fix the relationship between mental health and work? 

Covid-19 and a mental health system pushed beyond its limits 

Like many parts of the health and care system, mental health services in the UK were under significant pressure before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. 

Recruitment and retention of staff has been a long-term challenge in the sector, with particular shortages in nursing and senior medical staff being raised as serious risks well before the spectre of coronavirus reared its unwelcome head.  

2020 and the years that have followed have stretched our systems to the brink. 

Demand for treatment following the detrimental impact of the pandemic on individual mental wellbeing has spiked, with some services such as Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) experiencing a rise in referrals of more than 50%. 

At the same time, staffing issues have worsened, with excessive workloads leading to a vicious cycle of sickness, burnout and staff leaving the sector. 

All this has led to a situation where – despite the best efforts of staff and service leaders – hundreds of thousands of people across the UK are unable to access the diagnosis and treatment they need for mental health conditions in a timely manner. 

In this context, it is unsurprising that we are struggling to support a significant proportion of our population to be mentally “fit to work”. 

Doing things differently: the role of innovation in improving the mental health of our workforce 

The challenges facing the mental health sector are undeniably intimidating. Patience and well-intentioned tinkering will not deliver the improvements that we need to get the mental health of the nation back on track; transformative change is what we need. 

At the Health Innovation Network South London, we are proud to be working with some of the innovators facing those challenges head on – and making real progress towards overcoming them. 

Many of the innovators we are working with recognise the vital importance of childhood in determining long-term mental health.  

As the Faculty of Public Health describe the situation: “The most important opportunities for prevention of mental illness and promotion of mental health therefore lie in childhood, many of them in the context of the family”. Helping young people to build their mental wellness and resilience during childhood could be key to addressing the long-term illness keeping so many young people out of work. 

Among the work we have done in this area recently is a project with Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust to implement Lumi Nova, a therapeutic gaming app to support young children with anxiety.  One of the key themes from the work has been the importance of “whole system” thinking – recognising that mental health is the responsibility of more than just mental health services. 

A number of the early-stage innovators we support through the Innovate UK Mindset-XR programme are focused on using immersive technology to support children’s mental health in new and engaging ways. Through these technologies, we hope that in the future we can provide children with the option of safe and effective care delivered in ways that reflect their increasingly digital-first lifestyles. 

Two of our Mindset-XR companies (InsideOut and Tend VR) and TellMi, a company we have supported through our other programmes, have just received a share of £1.7m from SBRI to continue their work, focusing on workplace impact. 

But not all innovation has to be digital. For several years, we have supported the development and national adoption of FREED, a groundbreaking early intervention for eating disorders. This new model of care, originally developed by South London and the Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London, has helped thousands of young people access earlier diagnosis and more effective treatment for eating disorders. 

Our work on FREED continues with the pilot of peer support workers, a project that is looking to diversify the FREED workforce and enable people with lived experience of eating disorders gain paid employment – the report on this project is due in summer 2025.  

Elsewhere, we work closely with innovators tackling mental illnesses which are less well known and highly relevant not just to tomorrow’s workforce, but to the workforce of today. 

Also through SBRI funding, we are currently working in partnership with Samphire Neuroscience and Queen Mary University London to support the validation of a Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Device (Nettle) to manage symptoms of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). PMDD is another example of an often-overlooked condition causing increased absenteeism, decreased productivity and decreased work-related quality of life. 

Although the approach taken by each of these innovations varies significantly, they all share the same drive to do things differently – supporting the workforce to access effective care through less-traditional means. 

Working together to support the mental health of our workforce 

Get Britain Working reinforces that mental health is at the heart of people’s everyday lives; a welcome and worthwhile reflection. However, economic productivity is just one aspect of a person’s life impacted by mental ill-health. A holistic approach beyond counting the cost in terms of pounds lost or employment rates impacted remains vital. 

A thriving mentally and physically well workforce is as much the responsibility of all employers (small and large) and our educational systems as it is NHS mental health services. 

Innovation holds a key to helping all those with a vested interest in a healthier working population achieve their collective goals. And those innovations are out there – with the support and investment, they will help us turn the tide. 

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Dr Jade Thai, Senior Research Lead, Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (M-RIC), Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust.

The Forum for Mental Health Technology Innovators in Liverpool on 27 March, organised by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) HealthTech Research Centre for Mental Health (MindTech) on behalf of the NIHR Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration (MH-TRC) UK Mental Health Mission (MHM), brought together a diverse group of stakeholders including several of the UKRI funded Mindset innovators to explore the future of mental health care through technology.  

The Forum was held at the iconic Royal Liver Building in Liverpool in recognition of the advances made in mental health research by Liverpool’s Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (M-RIC) – a partnership between Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Liverpool.

By connecting academic researchers, healthcare providers, industry innovators, and service users, the forum provided a platform for discussing how emerging technologies like XR (Extended Reality), Big Data, and AI can be applied in clinical mental health care settings. 

Key themes included: 

•     Collaboration across sectors: The event demonstrated the power of bringing together diverse stakeholders – from innovators and clinicians to academic researchers and service users. The shared enthusiasm stemmed from the success stories of overcoming challenges through collaboration, showing how a unified approach could lead to more impactful mental health solutions. 

•     Overcoming barriers: Challenges such as navigating regulatory pathways,  engaging with the NHS, and securing funding were discussed. Speakers and panellists shared their experiences, offering insights on how these hurdles could be overcome and how innovators could better navigate the complex landscape of healthcare technology. 

•     Bridging the gap between innovation and clinical needs: A critical discussion centred on the tension between entrepreneurial innovation and the real-world needs of clinicians and service users. Innovators were encouraged to move beyond creating technologies based on assumptions “We’ve built it, they will come” and instead focus on co-designing solutions based on the needs and feedback of those directly impacted by mental health issues. 

•     Real-world insights: Innovators gained valuable direct feedback from clinicians and service users, helping them refine their products and align them more closely with the NHS care pathways. This interaction emphasised the importance of understanding the lived experience and ensuring that technology solutions complement human care rather than replace it entirely. 

•     Human-centred technology: NHS professionals reinforced the need for technology to be used in a way that supports and enhances care rather than diminishing the human aspect of mental health services. There was a shared understanding that innovation must always be balanced with duty of care and must be designed to be safe, accessible, and beneficial for both patients and clinicians. 

The atmosphere of the day was positively charged – and it was apparent how delighted the innovators and industry reps were to meet clinicians, academics and support organisations such as MindTech, M-RIC and the Health Innovation Network.  

Several innovators had the opportunity to demonstrate their products including those supported by the Mindset-XR Innovator Support Programme such as Anagram, Human Studio, PWFL Health, Scenegraph Studios, SyncVR and Tend VR.  

By the end of the forum, many attendees I spoke to felt more informed about the complex landscape of mental health technology innovation.  

Specifically, innovators left with clearer pathways for collaboration, access to NHS resources, and a deeper understanding of how to align their work with the needs of both service users and healthcare professionals. 

Overall, the event highlighted the exciting potential for technology to transform mental health care, while emphasising the need for collaboration, human-centred design, and a deep understanding of the real-world challenges faced by both healthcare providers and those with lived experience. 

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Our Mindset-XR Innovation Support Programme spotlight for November is on SyncVR Medical. 

Floris van der Breggen, SyncVR Medical’s founder and CEO, tells us a bit about the company and their Virtual Reality programme, Project Zenith. The Health Innovation Network South London is supporting SyncVR Medical as part of our delivery of the Mindset-XR Innovation Support Programme for Innovate UK.

Please give us some background on SyncVR Medical 

SyncVR Medical was founded in 2019 to reimagine healthcare with XR technology, and we’re now the largest Extended Reality (XR) healthcare platform in Europe. We’re like often described as the Netflix for XR in healthcare, selecting the best XR tech from around the world and making them available under one platform. Similar to Netflix, we develop our own content and also select/curate tech from around the world, so that a healthcare organisation has the best selection available to them. Our team is a mix of healthcare experts, engineers, and creatives, all dedicated to solving real problems with innovative, patient-focused tools. We’ve built partnerships with over 250 hospitals across Europe and the UK, implementing our applications from A to Z.

Can you tell us about Project Zenith?

Project Zenith is something we’re incredibly proud of. It’s a Virtual Reality (VR) program designed for young people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who experience anxiety – an underserved group when it comes to accessible therapy. Zenith provides a safe, immersive space where users can build coping skills through VR-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) techniques. We’re developing Zenith alongside Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, with the goal of not just supporting patients, but also relieving pressure on NHS services by reducing waiting times. For us, this isn’t just a project; it’s a pathway to make mental health care more proactive and approachable.

How do your innovations tackle inequalities in mental health?

Access and affordability are the biggest challenges in mental health, especially for marginalised groups. With our XR solutions, we’re bridging that gap by bringing therapy to people wherever they are, on their terms. Project Zenith is just one example: ASD patients who may not respond to traditional therapy environments can access therapeutic tools through VR, opening doors that were previously closed to them. We’re focused on making mental health care more inclusive, empowering people from all walks of life to get the support they need.

What is the biggest challenge you have faced so far in developing your innovation?

Healthcare is a highly regulated field – and that’s partly a good thing. However, it also means extra layers to navigate, from ethics approvals to clinical trial protocols. With Project Zenith, we’ve had to plan carefully around these requirements and delay formal patient inclusions. It’s challenging but eventually worth it.

Why should the NHS be excited about your innovation?

The NHS should be excited because SyncVR aligns directly with NHS priorities: faster access to care, innovative treatment options, and reduced cost pressures. Project Zenith is a perfect fit, as it offers the NHS a scalable, evidence-backed tool for ASD patients dealing with anxiety. It’s a chance to transform patient pathways with a solution that doesn’t rely on medication and offers personalisation at scale. Collaborating with us means unlocking new ways to support patients and elevate the standard of mental health care.

What three pieces of advice would you give budding innovators?

Go deep on the problem: Real impact comes from understanding the problem you’re solving from all angles – especially through the lens of those directly affected. Collaborations with clinicians is absolutely essential here.

Think beyond today: Whatever you’re building, make sure it’s designed to grow. The healthcare landscape changes fast, so adaptability is key.

Stay resilient and keep learning: Innovation is a rollercoaster. Learn from each challenge, and don’t let setbacks derail your commitment to solving the problem

What are your hopes and ambitions for the future?

Simply put, we want XR to become a trusted, mainstream part of healthcare. We’re building on Zenith’s success to create a full XR treatment that is ready for international rollout. We hope to make this happen using innovation grants to bring the tech to the next level!

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Our Mindset-XR Innovation Support Programme spotlight for October is on Play Well For Life, established by Dr. Sarah Campbell in 2019.

Background

Having experienced my own mental health struggles as a young person, I saw that treatment often involved very long waits and traditional psychological therapeutic approaches that didn’t work for everyone,  and I wanted to do something to address this.

While studying for a PhD in Psychology, I worked as Head of Wellbeing at a small university and started to think about technology solutions as being the way forward rather than the traditional hard to scale models of psychological intervention. 

I co-founded an award-winning wellbeing app called 87%, and learnt a huge amount about developing digital products for psychological intervention. I also saw that apps struggled with the long-term engagement needed to bring about behavioural change. I was using game-based approaches in workshops, and that is where I started to explore digital game-based learning. I did a post-doc at University of Southampton, developing a digital game for children with chronic health conditions to learn transition skills, and started to understand these approaches.  

During my PhD I used music to study emotions, and developed a music-based listening intervention and evidenced it compared to mindfulness. As a result of this, I won funding to turn it into a digital prototype, and this was the start of Play Well For Life.

Play Well For Life was established to use game-based learning to deliver psychological intervention to young people. Our unique selling point is that all our games are social, meaning young people inherently develop communication skills, social connections and a sense of belonging, which we know is vital, particularly for teenagers, to develop a sense of wellbeing. We have developed and commercialised several games, employing game development teams from the games industry to ensure the games look and feel great, and co-producing with adolescents, clinical psychologists and educators to ensure the necessary skills are developed and have a strong evidence-base. We then work with academics to evidence that are games are doing what they were designed to do. 

How does your innovation tackle inequalities?

Dragons of Afterlands is an award-winning, evidence-based augmented reality board game that can be played in-person, remotely or hybrid. Free-at-the-point of access, we are targeting Dragons of Afterlands specifically at those who experience higher challenges with their mental health. Young people with chronic health conditions are 60% more likely to experience a mental health issue by the age of 15 than other teenagers. Adolescents with complex medical conditions are often uprooted from their environments and isolated in hospital when undergoing treatment. Such hospital stays reduce a young person’s autonomy, activity levels and disrupt peer relationships, leading to anxiety, depression and social withdrawal.

Our tool has been identified as an innovative way to support young people transitioning into hospital, building relationships with staff and peers during their stay and supporting continuity of care when they leave hospital. It is also being used by staff during hospital stays to help have tricky conversations and develop essential skills to support resilience, socio-emotional and advocacy skills. 

A second group we are targeting are those receiving education from hospital education services. Whilst some are young people with chronic health conditions, hospital education services increasingly support young people who experience Emotionally-Based School Avoidance (EBSA). These young people are currently offered minimal 1:1 tutoring (two hours per week in some areas). This is resource intensive and doesn’t allow for the benefits that come from learning with peers. Our tool has been identified as an innovative way to extend resources by enabling 1:3 delivery, and to build peer support opportunities, ultimately leading to faster re-integration to in-person and group learning. 

What is the biggest challenge you have faced so far in developing your innovation?

As with all projects, finding continuous funding, and enough funding is always a challenge. That’s why the Innovate UK Mindset-XR programme, and the support that comes with it from the Health Innovation Network South London, are so valuable. Aside from that, one of the big challenges we are facing at the moment is ensuring our product meets NHS infection control standards, and is inclusive and accessible to be used by young people with quite severe physical needs.

Augmented reality tracking (similar to scanning a QR code) can be affected by lighting, reflective surfaces etc. so finding a board material that works, and also can be repeatedly wiped clean with bleach has been an interesting and unexpected part of the research and development!

In terms of accessibility and inclusion, to play the game and interact with the augmented reality gameplay, players need to move their phone or tablet around to reach the different parts of the board, and some of the scenarios and content have needed to be redeveloped to be sensitive and appropriate to these audiences. We overcome challenges like these by co-producing with specific groups of young people and staff members to ensure as many barriers are removed as possible. 

What are your hopes and ambitions for the future?

Through this project, we are really coming to understand the gaps that exist for young people with chronic health conditions and for those struggling with mainstream education. Our hope is to move from piloting within the NHS to securing contracts to facilitate the adoption of Dragons of Afterlands, and then develop some of our other prototypes into fully-fledged game-based tools for healthcare staff to use with adolescents in healthcare settings.

We are also in the planning stages of developing a strong community of practice focused on adolescents, for those supporting young people in healthcare, such as Health Play Specialists, Clinical Psychologists, Occupational Therapists, and Head Teachers within alternative provisions.

What advice do you have for other innovators?

If you are planning on selling to the NHS, plan and budget for medical device registration,  co-produce your innovations with staff and users from the outset, and make the problem drive the innovation, rather than the other way round.

Finally, understand the care pathway your innovation fits into and what outcomes you need to demonstrate to convince commissioners your innovation is worth a try.  And enjoy the journey!

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MQ Mental Health research is an award-winning charity which funds much-needed scientific research to transform the lives of everyone affected by mental illness, working to create a world where mental illness is understood, effectively treated and ultimately prevented. MQ Mental Health Research are partnering with the Health Innovation Network South London to provide learning and advice around the role of lived experience for the Mindset-XR Innovation Support programme. Through fostering collaboration between the immersive technology sector and mental health providers, Mindset-XR aims to accelerate treatment by leveraging immersive digital therapies to offer faster and more accessible support for individuals with mental health concerns.

Championing the voices of people with lived and living experience of mental illnesses in research is at the core of MQ Mental Health’s work, and they have set up a Lived Experience Expert Network made up of over 100 people from 25 countries around the world who collaborate on our research programmes and projects. In this blog, Mariana Bolivar, Research Programme Lead at MQ Mental Health, discusses why lived experience involvement is crucial for innovators to consider. 

People with lived experience of mental illness, either because they themselves have experienced it or they are caring for someone who does, have a wealth of valuable knowledge to share. We know that lived experience involvement and engagement are crucial for successful and impactful research and product development in mental health tech research.

Within the context of healthcare, we define lived experience as personal knowledge gained directly and first-hand, rather than through representations constructed by other people.

Clinicians, researchers and innovators may not have first-hand experience of living with the mental health condition they are trying to find solutions for, which makes active participation from people who can provide personal insights on how the condition made them feel and what it’s like to live with on a daily basis all the more important.

Many research projects fall into the so-called ‘valley of death’ in research where, following what can be as long as a 17-year period of going through the process from discovery to basic research to applied research, product development and ultimately production, they fail to have real-life application.

Actively engaging Lived Experience Partners from the outset, seeking their feedback and using their insights to help inform the design and delivery of a research project, leads to more active co-production where responsibility and power are shared at all stages, leading ultimately to healthcare solutions that better suit their needs.

However, we know there are barriers to be aware of when engaging with Lived Experience Partners, which include digital inequalities, communication challenges and accusations of tokenism.

These can all be avoided by taking the time to understand the needs of lived experience partners, making sure there are alternatives to digital strategies where necessary, limiting the use of jargon and hard-to-understand terminology and ensuring that Lived Experience Partners are included in every stage of the decision-making process, so their contribution is valued and actual.

It is also important to make sure you involve a range of voices where possible, with a diversity of experience and backgrounds.

There are UK Standards for Public Involvement which are a useful starting point, providing guidance around inclusivity, working together in a respectful way that values all contributions and offering support and learning opportunities.

The Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) is another helpful resource offering information on how to fairly compensate those with lived experience who take part in your projects.

We know from our own experience that working in partnership with those with lived experience and making projects more user-led brings better results, ensuring tech products lead to tangible improvements in people’s lives.

MQ Mental Health Research are one of our partners on the Mindset-XR Innovation Support programme. 

Please visit our dedicated pages to find out more about the programme and sign up to our monthly newsletter.