Welcome

Welcome to the Showcase Conference for the Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind research initiative funded by UKRI.

This ambitious six-year initiative has supported 33 diverse projects, exploring critical questions about young people’s mental health, including:

• How do mental health needs emerge during adolescence?

• What makes some young people more resilient while others are more vulnerable?

• How can we promote positive mental health and wellbeing through early intervention?

The programme has united researchers from across the four nations spanning multiple disciplines, creating unique opportunities for collaboration and discovery.

Lived experience has been at the heart of this work. Young people’s voices have shaped the design and delivery of studies—not just as participants, but as advisers and partners.

Today, we celebrate the progress made in understanding the factors that influence mental health and in the development of innovative approaches that support young people to maximise their potential. We hope you leave inspired by research and ideas that will pave the way for improved mental health and wellbeing of current and future generations of young people.

Angie Hart, University of Brighton
Nothing about us without us: civic activism as a mental health intervention - Boingboing

Anna Moore, University of Cambridge
Towards early identification of adolescent mental health problems (GtR)

Daniel Smith, University of Glasgow
SCRAMS – Sleep, circadian rhythms and mental health in schools (SCRAMS)

Russell Viner, University College London
Understanding and enhancing mental health competence - a promising new approach to improving lives for young people (GtR)

John Devaney, University of Edinburgh
The mental health and wellbeing of youth in care and care-leavers: Development of a national collaborative research agenda (GtR)

Chris Hollis, University of Nottingham
Adolescent Mental Health and Development in the Digital World (GtR)

Rosemarie McCabe, City, University of London
Agency, Justice and Social Identity in Youth Mental Health: A Collaboration with Young People, Clinicians & Academics across Philosophy, Ethics & Neuroscience

Siobhan O’Neill, University of Ulster
Future Minds NI (GtR)

Laura Nellums, University of Nottingham
The DREAM Project: Diversity, Research, and Engagement for Adolescent Mental Health (GtR)

Lucy Biddle, University of Bristol
Adolescence, digital technology and mental health care: exploring opportunity and harm (GtR)

Ann John, Swansea University
'Be Seen: an arts-led participatory approach to understanding 'big data' in young people's mental health and use of images by young people (GtR)

Andrea Danese, King's College London
Rapid knowledge mobilisation to promote adolescent mental health in the era of COVID-19 (GtR)

Cathy Creswell, University of Oxford
CoRAY: Evidence based mental health and wellbeing resources made by young people for young people in the COVID-19 context  

Edward Watkins, University of Exeter
Nurture-U: Developing and Evaluating a Stepped Change Whole University approach to Student Mental Health

Lisa Holmes, University of Oxford
and Rachel Hiller, University of Bath
The shaping of mental health and the mechanisms leading to (un)successful transitions for care-experienced young people (GtR)

Edmund Sonuga-Barke, Kings College London
Regulating Emotions – Strengthening Adolescent Resilience

Ulrike Schmidt, Kings College London
and Helen Sharpe, University of Edinburgh
EDIFY: Eating Disorders: Delineating illness and recovery trajectories to inform personalised prevention and early intervention

Chris Hollis and Ellen Townsend, Nottingham University
Digital Youth: Adolescent Mental Health and Development in the Digital World

Essi Viding and Pasco Fearon, University College London
The ReSET Project: Developing a school-based, transdiagnostic, preventative intervention for adolescent mental health

Kam Bhui, University of Oxford
Minhua Ma, Falmouth University
Attune: Understanding mechanisms and mental health impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences to co-design preventive arts and digital interventions

*For more information on the Research Programmes please see the Abstracts tab

Heather Whalley, University of Edinburgh
Loneliness in the digital world: Co-developing smartphone-based research to examine how online social experiences impact adolescent mental health (GtR)

Kirstin Mitchell, University of Glasgow
Good Measure Project: Advancing measurement of gender and sexual dimensions of adolescent mental health and wellbeing: Addressing a missing link

Johnny Downs, King's College London
The automated coding of expressed emotion to enhance clinical and epidemiological mental health research in adolescence (GtR)

Michael Larkin, Aston University
A new methodology linking interactional and experiential approaches, and involving young people as co-analysts of mental health encounters (GtR)

Nina Vaswani, University of Strathclyde
Men Minds - Better mental health for young men: Co-producing change for better mental health for adolescent young men at the margins

Ian Apperly, University of Birmingham
Developing a measure of social understanding for 15- 24-year-olds that is appropriate, fair, valid, and theoretically motivated. (GtR)

Margarita Panayiotou, University of Manchester
#So.Me: Development and validation of the Social Media Experience measure: Using objective assessment and adolescents' experience to inform its development

Jennifer Lau, Queen Mary University of London
Capturing loneliness across youth: Co-production of a new developmentally sensitive scale (GtR)

Nicola Byrom, King's College London
About Us — U-Belong: The time of their lives? Developing Concepts and Methods to Understand Loneliness in Students

Richard Cookson, University of York
Long-Term Modelling Tools for Adolescent Mental Health and Wellbeing Research (GtR)

Paola Dazzan, King's College London
CELEBRATE: Co-producing a framework of guiding principles for engaging representative and diverse cohorts of young people

Paul Cooke, University of Leeds
CREATE: Creating Research Ecologies to Advance Transdisciplinary lEarning: Arts-based programs and the study of adolescent loneliness | We are working to support and improve arts-based mental research, focusing on youth loneliness

Mark McCann, University of Glasgow
SOCITS: A SOCial sITuational Systems approach to measuring and modelling influences on adolescent mental health