Powering a Research Revolution in Mental Health for Akrivia
Mental health conditions affect one in four of us in the UK each year. For some people, these conditions can be debilitating, life limiting and long-lasting.
While we can celebrate improvements in our willingness to talk about mental health, and the increased focus it now receives, we cannot be as positive about how we diagnose and treat those living with more serious problems. Not much has changed in our approaches to these conditions for generations, and progress made in other areas of medical research is conspicuously lacking in mental health. We must strive to do better.
Akrivia aims to do just that. The company, which spun out from Oxford University, is focused on advancing research into mental health conditions and dementias, with a particular specialism in unlocking the potential of unstructured patient data to create deeper understanding about people’s lives, their conditions and the benefits and drawbacks of current treatments.
With funding from the Wellcome Trust and J&J, Akrivia are undertaking an ambitious new research programme called GlobalMinds. It is seeking to attract 50,000 people living with bipolar, depression or schizophrenia, together with a subset of people living with dementia, to form a precision neuropsychiatric dataset that will unlock further research into improving diagnosis and treatment. Participants who take part answer an in-depth questionnaire about themselves, choose to donate a saliva or blood sample to allow for biological analysis, which is then combined with their NHS record to form an incredibly detailed picture about how their condition has impacted them.
Claremont has partnered with Akrivia from early in the process of designing and developing GlobalMinds. Initially we undertook both secondary and primary research to build a COM-B hypothesis of what factors would enable or hinder would-be participants from taking part. This saw us complete a literature review and twenty depth interviews with people living with the mental health conditions that are the focus of GlobalMinds.
From there, and again working in partnership with people with lived experience, we designed and delivered a comprehensive programme of comms, brand and digital support. We built and tested messaging frameworks, the look and feel of the study, we advised across the entire user journey with behaviourally-informed advice on how to design an experience that reassured and encouraged participants end-to-end. We have drawn up a stakeholder engagement strategy to begin to get the programme out into the world, to build partnerships and trust, and to share its ambitious vision with likeminded organisations. And we have partnered with the Akrivia team to formulate an evaluation framework to track progress, learn from what is working and to problem solve.
GlobalMinds went live in late spring 2025, and our focus now, working in partnership with Akrivia, is on building momentum and attracting and supporting participants to take part. With half of us likely to experience a mental health problem at some point in our lives, we need GlobalMinds to succeed and demonstrate how research ambition, powered by people with lived experience, can finally change the outlook for this underserved area of public health.
“Working closely with the wonderfully experienced and dynamic team at Claremont has hugely strengthened our study brand and visual identity, and has been instrumental in informing our campaign design and communications strategy. They really get immersed in the detail and it feels like they’re part of the team, rather than an independent one. They bring high standards, pragmatism and impressive facilitation, and hugely valuable insights from other work they’ve led which they share generously!”
Byron Tibbitts – Head of Programmes, Akrivia Health