New call for proposals: NRP 85 "Mental Health of Adolescents"

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) is launching a call for the National Research Programme "Mental Health of Adolescents" (NRP 85) based on a mandate from the Federal Council.

Goals and characteristics of NRP 85

NRP 85 aims to improve mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention approaches for adolescents in Switzerland. It will fund research that improves the evidence base on effective and scalable prevention and early intervention approaches, that advances the understanding of systemic risk and protective factors for adolescent mental health, and that supports the development of policy-relevant and practice-oriented solutions.

NRP 85 focuses on two research areas:

Research area 1 "Prevention and early intervention approaches" will examine how evidence-based interventions can be adapted, developed and evaluated in Swiss contexts, with a particular focus on innovative, low-threshold and scalable approaches that extend beyond the traditional healthcare system and meet the needs of diverse and vulnerable adolescent populations.

Research area 2 "Systemic risk and protective factors" will investigate how structural conditions in formally organised environments – such as education, vocational training and mandatory military and civil service – influence adolescent mental health, with the goal of identifying systemic characteristics that support or hinder positive developmental trajectories.

All projects are encouraged to engage with non-academic partners and should produce outputs that can inform policy development, system design and the implementation of prevention and early intervention strategies. Projects in research area 1 are required to have a non-academic project partner and to include transdisciplinary elements in their project design.

NRP 85 will operate with overall funding of 7 million Swiss francs. The research phase will last 4 years.

Submission procedure and deadlines

Applicants must submit an expression of interest via the SNSF Portal by 24 November 2026, 5 p.m. Swiss local time. This step allows the SNSF to organise the upcoming evaluation procedure. There will be no evaluation or preselection at this stage.

Please note that it will not be possible to submit a full proposal if an expression of interest is not submitted by the appropriate deadline. The submission deadline for full proposals is 19 January 2027, 5 p.m. Swiss local time. Detailed information on the participation requirements as well as on the submission and evaluation procedures is available in the call document.