History

"The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health has over the past 20 years become the leading provider of research and training in mental health. To say the charity is widely respected would be a huge understatement."

David Brindle, The Guardian, March 2006

Centre for Mental Health began in March 1985 as the National Unit for Psychiatric Research and Development (NUPRD). It was founded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, an independent grant-making trust set up by Lord Sainsbury of Turville to 'advance education and learning in the science and practise of mental health care, to promote research into mental health and publish the useful results and to assist the provision of mental health care for those in need of it'. The aim was for NUPRD to tackle these issues by working in a different way to other organisations.

NUPRD was staffed by a small group of people working in an office at Lewisham Hospital. After 1989 it became known as Research and Development for Psychiatry (RDP) and then moved into the current offices on Borough High Street.

In February 1992, we became Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. Sainsbury Centre was at the centre of developing and helping to implement the National Service Framework for Mental Health (see Key Work).

From 2006, we changed our work to focus on mental health and employment, in which we already had an established programme, and a new area of work on mental health and the criminal justice system. In 2007, we launched a new look and logo (the green that I hope you are now familiar with) to accompany this change in our focus.

The Gatsby Charitable Foundation provided the Centre's core funding each year from 1985. But in 2009 it announced that it would be spending out its funds in following few years, and its annual grant to us would cease in 2010. It has now done so, and we have made plans for new working arrangements for the future, for which Gatsby has provided a final grant.

Since July 2010, we have been known as Centre for Mental Health.