This characterisation of mental health in UK Biobank now means we have a good handle on common mental disorders in over 169,000 individuals, making this one of the largest ever surveys of mental health. Given depth of other data types in UK Biobank – including genetics, imaging, physical health measurement and health record linkages - it is a unique resource for mental health researchers.
Professor Matthew Hotopf, Executive Dean, IoPPN
05 June 2025
IoPPN Researchers share details on second mental health UK Biobank survey
With over 160,000 responses, the UK Biobank mental wellbeing survey allows researchers to better characterise common mental health disorders and social patterns in this important research cohort.
What is the UK Biobank?
Between 2006 and 2010, over half a million volunteer participants from England, Scotland and Wales were recruited for the UK Biobank (UKB) aged between 40 and 69 years at recruitment. The UKB is a valuable resource of both size and depth of data, used by thousands of researchers from around the world. Members of the School of Academic Psychiatry and School of Mental Health & Psychological Sciences at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's have been helping to make this significant cohort an even better resource for mental health research.
UKB have led the way in health-related markers, large-scale genotyping and imaging. In order to fully utilise these unique opportunities data to study mental health, Professor Matthew Hotopf has led a group of leading mental health researchers to advise UK Biobank about the needs of the community. Among the outcomes was a mental health survey in 2016, probably the largest ever survey on mental health at the time, and this even larger survey in 2022.
What did this survey do?
The latest paper, authored by Katrina Davis and Jonathan Coleman, with others from the IoPPN and multiple other academic centres, explains why a second mental health survey was carried out in Autumn 2022. This paper includes details on the design of the survey, and about the 169,253 participants who have completed. This survey also used repeated scales from the 2016 survey, meaning researchers can look at the changing mental health profile of this group over time. New sections were added to the survey as well, specifically about panic disorder and eating disorders to extend the range of disorders the UK Biobank can be used to research. Participants were also asked to repeat some of the questions about social factors that had not been updated since the baseline survey.
This article just scratches the surface in what can be done using this data on mental health and social factors within the UK Biobank, which we hope others will grasp, perhaps also including recently released data on subjective wellbeing, COVID-19 status and sleep.
Dr Katrina Davis, Research Associate – Psychological Medicine, IoPPN
Any genuine researcher from anywhere in the world can apply to use UK Biobank data, and a rough count of mental health-related research papers found over 500 so far. It is particularly useful for bringing together topics and techniques that registries and standalone surveys cannot manage, such as using genetic risk and imaging phenotypes on the relationship between physical and mental health states. The data has already been used in some high profile analyses, including Sociodemographic, clinical, and genetic factors associated with self-reported antidepressant response outcomes in the UK Biobank.
The survey data is currently available, visit the UK Biobank webpages for details of how to access and the wealth of other data. The OSF page by Katrina Davis and Jonathan Coleman has resources and a commentary on mental health research in UK Biobank.
Want to find out more?
The paper, titled The UK Biobank mental health enhancement 2022: Methods and results was published in PloS one, 20(5), e0324189. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0324189
In this story
Executive Dean, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience
Research Associate
Senior Lecturer in Statistical Genetics