Mental health disorders impose a major and growing societal burden in both the United Kingdom and France. In the UK, direct costs exceed £60 billion annually, rising to more than £300 billion when wider economic impacts are included. This underscores the urgent need for new, effective treatments grounded in strong scientific evidence and ready for translation into National Health Service systems and regulation.
To meet this challenge, the UK established the Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration (MH-TRC) in 2018. The MH-TRC brings together national expertise across key domains—Mood Disorders and Treatment-Resistant Depression, Early Psychosis, Children and Young People, Data and Digital Innovation, and Capacity Development—creating a coordinated platform for high-impact translational research.
France faces similar pressures. Longstanding underinvestment in mental health infrastructure and workforce shortages contrast sharply with world-leading scientific achievements, including the 2021 Inserm Research Prize. In response, France has launched PEPR PROPSY, a major national programme dedicated to precision psychiatry. PROPSY supports large multidisciplinary teams to develop biological and digital biomarkers, improve early detection, and accelerate the translation of innovations into clinical tools—helping modernise and future-proof the French mental health system. These efforts are critical as France’s economic burden of mental disorders has risen from €109 billion in 2009 to €163 billion in 2018, representing the country’s largest category of direct healthcare expenditure.
Momentum is now building in both countries to invest meaningfully in mental health treatment development. This creates a pivotal opportunity for coordinated Franco-British action with the potential for substantial scientific, clinical, and societal gains.
French and UK research teams have already made important advances in blood-based, neuroimaging, and digital biomarkers. The next step is to test and validate these findings across existing datasets and longitudinal cohorts, integrate multiple modalities, and progress towards regulatory approval. The successful emergence of blood-based biomarkers for dementia diagnosis shows that rapid translation in this field is possible.
We therefore propose establishing a Franco-British public-private partnership - uniting universities, charities, pharmaceutical companies, and technology firms - to accelerate biomarker discovery and validation, starting with blood-based biomarkers for mental disorders. Such a partnership would leverage the complementary strengths of PEPR PROPSY and the MH-TRC to deliver transformative progress in mental health research and care.
