Building on innovative solutions supported by EU Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation and/or international, national, regional, and local initiatives, the challenges of the topic are:

• to significantly increase / scale-up the percentage of interventions that are actually used, and
• to involve families, individuals/communities, stakeholders and authorities, such as public services, civil society organisations in the development and implementation of interventions aimed at heterogeneous segments of population

Additional evidence is also needed about to which extend mental health interventions are actually cost-effective and cost-efficient – looking via various policy perspectives, e.g. education, training, working life, well-being and health. This would aid policy makers to decide on which one (or a combination) of the policy choices to use when weighing up policy choices in investment for education, training and work- related outcomes.

To ensure replicability, projects are required to specify clearly how they target primary prevention (benefitting an entire target group), and/ or secondary prevention (provided for vulnerable groups and individuals with existing mental health problems). The project design and implementation should clearly outline and justify who they are targeting with what types of interventions and in what type(s) of contexts.

Special attention should be paid to the visibility and communication of the research and innovation findings to direct beneficiaries of the intervention and their families, communities, wider publics and stakeholders from the start of the work.

Clustering and cooperation with other selected projects under this call and other relevant projects is strongly encouraged. Considering the complex design and implementation of these projects, it is expected that projects may take 4 years or more to deliver solid evidence for take-up by policy makers, practitioners and stakeholders, which also justifies an appropriate budget per project.

Where applicable, proposals should leverage the data and services available through European Research Infrastructures federated under the European Open Science Cloud, as well as data from relevant Data Spaces. Particular efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of this topic is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable).