Psychiatry Research Trust
From PRT Pilot Funding to £2.7 Million in Research: Josefien Breedvelt's story
Early-career funding can be transformative. By giving researchers the opportunity to test promising ideas, gather vital evidence and build confidence, pilot grants often provide the foundation for much larger research programmes with the potential to improve lives.
Dr Josefien Breedvelt's journey is a powerful example. With support from the Psychiatry Research Trust, Josefien was able to develop and pilot the Balance study, a brief self-help intervention designed to help prevent depression in young people. The pilot generated encouraging early findings and provided the evidence needed to strengthen future funding applications.
Building on this work, Josefien has since secured an 8-year £2.7 million Wellcome Career Development Award to investigate how depression develops in adolescents and how it can be prevented. Her story demonstrates how investing in innovative early-career researchers can help unlock major advances in mental health research.
Below, Josefien reflects on her career journey, the impact of pilot funding, and her hopes for improving mental health outcomes for young people.
From frontline services to prevention research
I've worked in mental health research for nearly fifteen years. My first research role was as a research intern collecting and analysing fMRI data on disgust. Since then, I've worked across third-sector organisations and academia.
Some of the experiences that have shaped me most were working in frontline services supporting young people with addiction and mental health problems. Those experiences highlighted the importance of research because, through research, we can better understand how to support people while moving away from approaches that don't work.
Driven by a desire to improve the status quo, I decided to carry out a PhD alongside working full-time at the Mental Health Foundation. My PhD focused on the onset and relapse prevention of common mental health conditions, including among young people.
In 2023, I was fortunate to establish the Prevention Matters Lab at King's College London, with support from the Prudence Trust. I now lead a team focused on three key questions:
-
Who should we reach with preventative interventions, and when?
-
Which interventions are most effective?
-
How can we translate research findings into practice?
What excites me most is using advanced methods to improve our understanding of how mental health conditions emerge, and how we can best develop and deliver scalable interventions that support young people's mental health.
Developing the Balance Project
The Psychiatry Research Trust supported the development of Balance, a brief self-help intervention designed to activate positive beliefs through positive fantasising about the future and strengthening positive schemas.
The intervention is based on Preventive Cognitive Therapy, an evidence-based intervention for relapse prevention developed by Professor Claudi Bockting, which has demonstrated robust effects lasting up to 15 years. During my PhD, I proposed testing relapse prevention interventions to prevent first episodes of depression (onset prevention), a research programme I will continue through my Wellcome Career Development Award, which begins in October 2026.
For Balance, we deliberately moved away from app-based delivery and instead produced the intervention as a printed booklet. We worked with a lived experience designer to develop engaging graphics, alongside the Mental Health Prevention Advisory Group—a lived experience group I established to help shape the intervention. This is where team science really comes into play.
In our pilot study, we found significant reductions in depressive symptoms at one- and three-month follow-up among 45 adolescents aged 16–25. Qualitative interviews suggested positive attitudes towards the intervention, while also identifying ways to improve it, which we will take on board in future iterations.
The next step is to continue testing the premise of relapse prevention for primary prevention, including through my Wellcome Career Development Award funding.
Why pilot funding matters
Psychiatry Research Trust funding has meant an incredible amount to me because it enabled me to gather important pilot data to inform larger funding applications. Without this pilot funding, I would not have had the boost I needed to carry out the work and build a pathway towards larger grants.
Building on early success
Following the pilot project, I secured a £2.7 million Wellcome Career Development Award.
This funding will enable me to disentangle the individual mechanisms associated with depression onset in adolescents and explore how we can modify them. I am most excited to test "out of the box" approaches, collaborate with interdisciplinary experts, and establish systems and measures that enable further advances in prevention science in the UK and globally.
Looking to the future
Ultimately, I hope this work will help inform scalable strategies for prevention, so that fewer young people experience devastating distress at an early age.
In my view, we should be able to deliver a comprehensive approach to prevention, ranging from personalised interventions to policy change, so that young people can access the right support when they need it. That is exactly what my work focuses on.
A message to supporters
By investing in early-career researchers and pilot projects, you are making a difference by supporting new and innovative ideas that can improve mental health.
You are also investing in the next generation of mental health researchers—people who are motivated to make a difference through new ideas and fresh momentum, enabling them to contribute to the field for decades to come. This is exactly why this kind of funding truly matters.
