Reflections by Emily Wheeler, Director of Research Partnerships & Development, MQ Mental Health Research
This year’s REAL Mental Health Summit was a masterclass in what it means to challenge the status quo, bringing together a group of people passionate about mental health but that don’t often get to be in the same room.
It was all about catalysing meaningful investment and building cross-sector collaboration that puts people and evidence at the centre of mental health innovation. It was an exciting opportunity to speak on a panel at the end of the two days on making mental health investable and to see our very own MQ Ambassador, Austin Okolo, close the whole summit with his keynote speech on voices of the future.
As charity partner to the Summit, MQ was proud to see such a wide range of stakeholders — from institutional investors and family offices to frontline clinicians and founders, many openly sharing their own lived experience of the challenges of mental illness — come together to ask: how do we make mental health truly investable? And even more importantly, how do we ensure those investments translate into real-world impact?
Why money matters — and where it should go?
A key theme across the event was the growing need for smarter funding models. Great ideas get stuck — they don’t have a clear path to grow into services that help people on a large scale.
That’s where things like blended finance and catalytic capital come in. These are approaches that mix different kinds of funding (like grants and investment) to share risk and support long-term progress.
The call was clear: mental health is where climate was a decade ago. Now’s the time to create infrastructure, shared frameworks, and collaborative capital (philanthropic and investment) that can catch up.
From treating symptoms to supporting whole people
Speakers talked about exciting tools like digital health apps, psychedelics, and AI, but the real focus was on people — and how to support their wellbeing, not just reduce symptoms. Key takeaways included:
- Prevention and early support save money and lives — we need to act early, not wait until crisis.
- Digital tools can be helpful if they’re created with the people who will use them, and if they avoid isolating people further.
- Success shouldn’t just be measured by fewer symptoms — we need to ask: how is this person living? Are they back at work? Are they feeling hopeful?