For mental health professionals
If you work in NHS mental health services, you can help make them better by supporting research studies.
We support research studies that seek to recruit participants through NHS services in England, and to do this, we need the help of mental health professionals who work in those services. Participants mostly need to be recruited through care coordinators or mental health professionals charged with their care.
We realise many mental health professionals may feel daunted by the prospect of getting involved in research studies, and feel they just don’t have the time to take on something extra. Our job is to make it easy for you to support research without adding to your workload.
To do this, we employ clinical studies officers to work side-by-side with mental health professionals. With clinicians’ consent, they explain the purpose of the research to people with mental health problems and asking them to participate in a study. Clinical studies officers work to support mental health professionals and to suit the demands of their service.
Our clinical studies officers are based at our eight regional offices, called hubs. Each hub works closely with the research and development managers in NHS trusts based within their geographical boundaries, and with research teams based at their local universities.
The hubs offer practical support to research teams to help them secure all the agreements and complete the administration and paperwork necessary to carry out studies in the NHS. They also introduce researchers to mental health professionals working in services that support people who will ultimately benefit from the studies.
We also support commercial studies and help pharmceutical companies, for example, to recruit participants for new drugs trials through NHS services. Industry-led studies are often looking for mental health professionals to be local investigators.
If you want to become more actively involved in research projects, register with the Mental Health Research Network. We will contact you quickly if we adopt a trial or study that may interest you.
page last updated 13 April 2011