The United Kingdom is currently living through a crisis in child and adolescent mental health, with rates of probable mental disorders having doubled since 2017 and remaining at elevated levels since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The system of support for children and young people is struggling to meet this increasing need, from universal services, to record waiting lists and increasing numbers of children and young people not meeting the criteria for specialist services.
The risk of poor mental health is not equally distributed amongst young people, and certain groups are at heightened risk of developing mental health problems. This includes those who have experienced trauma, disabled young people and those with special educational needs, and those with other protected characteristics. Rigorous, evidence-based and multidisciplinary research into adolescent mental health is more vital than ever if we are to collectively address the scale of this challenge.
The Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind programme includes seven multi-disciplinary research programmes focusing on adolescent mental health in a specific target group known to be at higher risk of developing mental health problems.
Explore the seven flagship programmes below:
ATTUNE: Understanding mechanisms and mental health impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences to co-design preventative arts and digital interventions
The University of Oxford and Falmouth University
Principal Investigators: Professor Kamaldeep Bhui and Professor Eunice Ma
Children and young people who experience multiple Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are at heightened risk of developing mental health needs in late adolescence and adulthood. However, why some young people develop mental health needs after suffering numerous ACEs, and others do not, is not well understood and results in many young people not receiving effective support.
This programme has generated lived experience data, shared by young people through creative arts practices, combined with secondary analysis of large cohorts to address which person or context factors best explain adolescent mental health outcomes following different ACEs. The team have used their findings to inform the development of a co-designed public health resource to help organisations work in trauma-informed ways and a serious game ‘ACE of Hearts’ to support experiences around bereavement, poverty, disability, gender dysphoria and being a young carer. Young people have been actively involved in every aspect of the project, evaluating their experiences of participation and producing films and animations about their experiences.
Read more about ATTUNE
Teenagers drink tea together, some of them using smartphones.
Digital Youth: Adolescent Mental Health and Development in the Digital World
The University of Nottingham
Principal Investigators: Professor Chris Hollis and Professor Ellen Townsend
The digital world, perhaps the biggest change to human culture since the industrial revolution, presents both opportunities and risks for young people’s development, mental health and wellbeing, and involves all aspects of their lives. Previously, no single academic discipline or organisation had the breadth and capacity to coordinate research and policy in this area.
Digital Youth, an interdisciplinary programme bringing together world-leading researchers, has been co-produced and co-designed with the young person’s advisory group Sprouting Minds (known as Sprouts) and is at the forefront of these developments.
The Digital Youth team have worked to find practical solutions through understanding the complex risks and opportunities for mental health associated with young people’s engagement with the digital world, with the aim of generating new preventative and therapeutic interventions.
The vision is to harness the potential of digital technology to transform young people’s mental health and wellbeing and provide a safe, and supportive, digital environment to tackle the growing humanitarian crisis of unmet need arising from mental health disorders in young people aged 10-24 years old.
Read more about Digital Youth
A teenager sits looking at the ground, deep in thought
EDIFY: Eating disorders: delineating illness and recovery trajectories to inform personalised prevention and early intervention in young people
King’s College London and University of Edinburgh
Principal Investigators: Professor Ulrike Schmidt and Dr Helen Sharpe
More young people from all backgrounds, genders and identities are receiving treatment for an eating disorder than ever before. However, current treatments are not effective for everyone and are not tailored to individual illness stages or circumstances.
EDIFY’s interdisciplinary research programme has addressed gaps in our knowledge of the different ways in which young people develop eating disorders and what things promote recovery. It has explored how we can characterise illness stages in eating disorders, distinguishing between ‘at-risk’, ‘early’, and ‘late’ stage difficulties, and tailor interventions appropriately. The programme has used a range of methods, from arts-based workshops, through to data analytics and neuroimaging, all in partnership with a youth advisory panel of young people with lived experience of eating disorders, to initiative a paradigm shift in early intervention for eating disorders.
Read more about EDIFY
A group, made up of three young people and an older man, sit having a discussion.
NURTURE-U: Developing and evaluating a stepped change whole-university approach for student wellbeing and mental health
University of Exeter
Principal Investigator: Professor Edward Watkins
Rates of mental health conditions in university students are rising, with a third of students saying that their mental health has worsened since entering higher education. Universities are reporting increasing demand for mental health support services that exceed their capacity to provide help, and evidence-based resources are not widely available.
Nurture-U has developed and piloted a whole-university approach to mental health and wellbeing. In partnership with students, university leaders and researchers, the programme has spanned a large-scale longitudinal wellbeing survey, explorations of what makes a compassionate campus, piloting of a mental health literacy course, and trials of preventative and treatment interventions, alongside practical outputs and guidance for universities.
Read more about NURTURE-U
ReSET: Developing a school-based, transdiagnostic, preventative intervention for adolescent mental health
University College London
Principal Investigators: Professor Essi Viding and Professor Pasco Fearon
How young people process emotions and how they develop social relationships are both influential factors on their mental health but have traditionally been looked at separately and interventions often focus on one or the other.
ReSET has developed and piloted a new transdiagnostic school-based intervention to prevent mental health problems emerging or worsening in young people in the top 25% of self-reported general mental health difficulties. The intervention addresses the links between emotions and social relationships, using principles from interpersonal psychotherapy and cognitive training. Young people played a key role influencing the content of the intervention to make it engaging and relevant for the age group. Results of a trial with 560 young people will be published soon, and the team have shared actionable insights from the experience of embedding a preventative intervention in schools, via podcasts, a webinar, public health resources and policy insights.
Read more about ReSET
RE-STAR: Regulating Emotions – Strengthening Adolescent Resilience
King’s College London
Principal Investigator: Professor Edmund Sonuga-Barke
Autistic adolescents, and those with ADHD, are more likely than their neurotypical peers to develop depression by late adolescence. However, we currently don’t understand which individuals are at risk, what underlying processes increase that risk, or the best way to intervene to increase resilience.
RE-STAR is a multi-disciplinary collective of academic researchers, young neurodivergent people and stakeholder practitioners. Together, the team have addressed these gaps in knowledge by exploring the links between neurodivergent individuals’ experiences of, and responses to, upsetting experiences in school, and their emergent risk of depression.
Bringing these findings together with the results of applied theatre practices, workshops, focus groups and surveys with staff and neurodivergent young people, the team are developing Place Positive: a school-based intervention to reduce the risk of depression among pupils with ADHD or autism traits.
Read more about RE-STAR
ReThink: The shaping of mental health and the mechanisms of leading to (un)successful transitions for care-experienced young people
University of Sussex and University College London
Principal Investigators: Prof Lisa Holmes and Prof Rachel Hiller
Care-experienced young people have far higher rates of mental health difficulties than their non-care-experienced peers. The failure to adequately support these difficulties has been linked to the higher rates of school exclusion, homelessness, and unemployment being experienced by this group. But these outcomes are not inevitable – with the right support, care-experienced young people can thrive.
This research has explored different processes that might drive mental health and wellbeing for care-experienced young people, and what good support looks like, so we can understand why some young people struggle more or less, and how to provide better help. The team has focused particularly on two key transitions: moving into and through early secondary school, and into emerging adulthood. The investigators have worked closely with care-experienced young people to shape the research and ensure findings get to where they are most needed.
Read more about ReThink