��Ī - teenagers

Adolescents who sleep longer perform better at cognitive tasks

cjb250 — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 15:00:23 +0000

But the study of adolescents in the US also showed that even those with better sleeping habits were not reaching the amount of sleep recommended for their age group.

Sleep plays an important role in helping our bodies function. It is thought that while we are asleep, toxins that have built up in our brains are cleared out, and brain connections are consolidated and pruned, enhancing memory, learning, and problem-solving skills. Sleep has also been shown to boost our immune systems and improve our mental health.

During adolescence, our sleep patterns change. We tend to start going to bed later and sleeping less, which affects our body clocks. All of this coincides with a period of important development in our brain function and cognitive development. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says that the ideal amount of sleep during this period is between eight- and 10-hours’ sleep.

Professor Barbara Sahakian from the Department of Psychiatry at the ��Ī said: “Regularly getting a good night’s sleep is important in helping us function properly, but while we know a lot about sleep in adulthood and later life, we know surprisingly little about sleep in adolescence, even though this is a crucial time in our development. How long do young people sleep for, for example, and what impact does this have on their brain function and cognitive performance?”

Studies looking at how much sleep adolescents get usually rely on self-reporting, which can be inaccurate. To get around this, a team led by researchers at Fudan University, Shanghai, and the ��Ī turned to data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States.

As part of the ABCD Study, more than 3,200 adolescents aged 11-12 years old had been given FitBits, allowing the researchers to look at objective data on their sleep patterns and to compare it against brain scans and results from cognitive tests. The team double-checked their results against two additional groups of 13-14 years old, totalling around 1,190 participants. The results are published today in Cell Reports.

The team found that the adolescents could be divided broadly into one of three groups:

Group One, accounting for around 39% of participants, slept an average (mean) of 7 hours 10 mins. They tended to go to bed and fall asleep the latest and wake up the earliest.

Group Two, accounting for 24% of participants, slept an average of 7 hours 21 mins. They had average levels across all sleep characteristics.

Group Three, accounting for 37% of participants, slept an average of 7 hours 25 mins. They tended to go to bed and fall asleep the earliest and had lower heart rates during sleep.

Although the researchers found no significant differences in school achievement between the groups, when it came to cognitive tests looking at aspects such as vocabulary, reading, problem solving and focus, Group Three performed better than Group Two, which in turn performed better than Group One.

Group Three also had the largest brain volume and best brain functions, with Group One the smallest volume and poorest brain functions.

Professor Sahakian said: “Even though the differences in the amount of sleep that each group got was relatively small, at just over a quarter-of-an-hour between the best and worst sleepers, we could still see differences in brain structure and activity and in how well they did at tasks. This drives home to us just how important it is to have a good night’s sleep at this important time in life.”

First author Dr Qing Ma from Fudan University said: “Although our study can’t answer conclusively whether young people have better brain function and perform better at tests because they sleep better, there are a number of studies that would support this idea. For example, research has shown the benefits of sleep on memory, especially on memory consolidation, which is important for learning.”

The researchers also assessed the participants’ heart rates, finding that Group Three had the lowest heart rates across the sleep states and Group One the highest. Lower heart rates are usually a sign of better health, whereas higher rates often accompany poor sleep quality like restless sleep, frequent awakenings and excessive daytime sleepiness.

Because the ABCD Study is a longitudinal study – that is, one that follows its participants over time – the team was able to show that the differences in sleep patterns, brain structure and function, and cognitive performance, tended be present two years before and two years after the snapshot that they looked at.

Senior author Dr Wei Cheng from Fudan University added: “Given the importance of sleep, we now need to look at why some children go to bed later and sleep less than others. Is it because of playing videogames or smartphones, for example, or is it just that their body clocks do not tell them it’s time to sleep until later?”

The research was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Postdoctoral Foundation of China and Shanghai Postdoctoral Excellence Program. The ABCD Study is supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Reference

Ma, Q et al. Neural correlates of device-based sleep characteristics in adolescents. Cell Reports; 22 Apr 2025; DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2025.115565

Adolescents who sleep for longer – and from an earlier bedtime – than their peers tend to have improved brain function and perform better at cognitive tests, researchers from the UK and China have shown.

Even though the differences in the amount of sleep that each group got was relatively small, we could still see differences in brain structure and activity and in how well they did at tasks

Barbara Sahakian

harpazo_hope (Getty Images)

Teenager asleep and wrapped in a blanket

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��Ī leads governmental project to understand impact of smartphones and social media on young people

cjb250 — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:01:37 +0000

The work has been commissioned by the UK government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology after a review by the UK Chief Medical Officer in 2019 found the evidence base around the links to children’s mental health were insufficient to provide strong conclusions suitable to inform policy.

The project – led by a team at the ��Ī, in collaboration with researchers at several leading UK universities – is aimed at improving policymakers’ understanding of the relationship between children’s wellbeing and smartphone use, including social media and messaging. It will help direct future government action in this area.

Project lead Dr Amy Orben from the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (MRC CBU) at the ��Ī said: “There is huge concern about the impact of smartphone use on children's health, but the evidence base remains fairly limited. While the government is under substantial time pressure to make decisions, these will undoubtedly be better if based on improved evidence.

“This is a complex and rapidly evolving issue, with both potential harms and benefits associated with smartphone use. Technology is changing by the day, and scientific evidence creation needs to evolve and innovate to keep up.

“Our focus will be on deepening our causal understanding of the effects of new technologies, particularly over short timescales, to ensure that decisions are informed, timely and evidence-based.”

Dr Orben will lead a Project Delivery Team, with Consortium Members from the universities of Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford and York and the London School of Economics. It will aim to identify which research methods and data sources will be most effective at identifying potential causal relationships between social media, smartphones, and the health and development of children and young people

Deputy project lead Dr Amrit Kaur Purba, also from the MRC CBU at ��Ī, said: “The impact of social media on young people is a pressing issue, and our project will ensure the research community is in a strong position to provide policymakers with the causal and high-quality insights they need. While we don’t expect this to be straightforward, our research will leverage diverse expertise from across the UK to deliver a comprehensive and informed response to make recommendations for how research in this area should be supported in future.”

The researchers will review and summarise existing research on the impact of smartphones and social media on children and young people’s mental health, wellbeing, physical health, lifestyle and health behaviours, and educational attainment. The review will recognise the diversity of perspectives that exist in this area and consider where further research could add valuable new insights to the evidence base.

They will assess the various methods and data available to understand the causal impacts, including recognising that online habits and emerging technologies are changing at a rapid pace, and considering how the experiences of vulnerable children and young people – for example, LGBTQ+ young people and those with special needs or mental health issues – can be captured in future research projects.

This will allow the team to recommend and outline how future research studies could deliver robust and causal evidence on the impact of smartphones and social media on child development factors in the next two to three years.

Technology Secretary Peter Kyle, said: "The online world offers immense opportunities for young people to connect and learn. Ensuring they can do so in an environment which puts their safety first is my priority and will guide this government’s action on online safety.

“That’s why we have launched new research, led by the ��Ī with support from other top UK universities, to better understand the complex relationship between technology and young people's wellbeing.

“This vital research will build a trusted evidence base for future action, helping us to protect and empower the next generation towards a safer and more positive digital future."

��Ī researchers are leading the first phase of a new research project that will lay the groundwork for future studies into the impact on children of smartphone and social media use.

This is a complex and rapidly evolving issue, with both potential harms and benefits associated with smartphone use. Technology is changing by the day, and scientific evidence creation needs to evolve and innovate to keep up

Amy Orben

Owen Franken

Teenager holding a smartphone

Yes

Time alone heightens ‘threat alert’ in teenagers – even when connecting online

fpjl2 — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 09:03:21 +0000

People in their late teens experience an increased sensitivity to threats after just a few hours left in a room on their own – an effect that endures even if they are interacting online with friends and family.

This is according to latest findings from a cognitive neuroscience experiment conducted at the ��Ī, which saw 40 young people aged 16-19 undergo testing before and after several hours alone – both with and without their smartphones.

Many countries have declared an epidemic of loneliness*. The researchers set out to “induce” loneliness in teenagers and study the effects through a series of tests, from a Pavlovian task to electrodes that measure sweat.

Scientists found that periods of isolation, including those in which participants could use their phones, led to an increased threat response – the sensing of and reacting to potential dangers. This alertness can cause people to feel anxious and uneasy.

The authors of the study say that isolation and loneliness might lead to excessive “threat vigilance”, even when plugged in online, which could negatively impact adolescent mental health over time.

They say it could contribute to the persistent and exaggerated fear responses typical of anxiety disorders on the rise among young people around the world.

While previous studies show isolation leads to anxious behaviour and threat responses in rodents, this is believed to be the first study to demonstrate these effects through experiments involving humans.

The findings are published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

“We detected signs of heightened threat vigilance after a few hours of isolation, even when the adolescents had been connected through smartphones and social media,” said Emily Towner, study lead author from ��Ī’s Department of Psychology.

“This alertness to perceived threats might be the same mechanism that leads to the excessive worry and inability to feel safe which characterises anxiety,” said Towner, a Gates ��Ī Scholar.

“It makes evolutionary sense that being alone increases our vigilance to potential threats. These threat response mechanisms undergo a lot of changes in adolescence, a stage of life marked by increasing independence and social sensitivity.”

"Our experiment suggests that periods of isolation in adolescents might increase their vulnerability to the development of anxiety, even when they are connected virtually.”

Researchers recruited young people from the local area in ��Ī, UK, conducting extensive screening to create a pool of 18 boys and 22 girls who had good social connections and no history of mental health issues.

Participants were given initial tests and questionnaires to establish a “baseline”. These included the Pavlovian threat test, in which they were shown a series of shapes on a screen, one of which was paired with a harsh noise played through headphones, so the shape became associated with a feeling of apprehension.

Electrodes attached to fingers monitored “electrodermal activity” – a physiological marker of stress – throughout this test.**

Each participant returned for two separate stints of around four hours isolated in a room in ��Ī University’s Psychology Department, after which the tests were completed again. There was around a month, on average, between sessions.

All participants underwent two isolation sessions. One was spent with a few puzzles to pass the time, but no connection to the outside world. For the other, participants were allowed smartphones and given wi-fi codes, as well as music and novels. The only major rule in both sessions was they had to stay awake.***

“We set out to replicate behaviour in humans that previous animal studies had found after isolation,” said Towner. “We wanted to know about the experience of loneliness, and you can’t ask animals how lonely they feel.”

Self-reported loneliness increased from baseline after both sessions. It was lower on average after isolation with social media, compared to full isolation.****

However, participants found the threat cue – the shape paired with a jarring sound – more anxiety-inducing and unpleasant after both isolation sessions, with electrodes also measuring elevated stress activity.

On average across the study, threat responses were 70% higher after the isolation sessions compared to the baseline, regardless of whether participants had been interacting digitally.

“Although virtual social interactions helped our participants feel less lonely compared to total isolation, their heightened threat response remained,” said Towner.

Previous studies have found a link between chronic loneliness and alertness to threats. The latest findings support the idea that social isolation may directly contribute to heightened fear responses, say researchers.

Dr Livia Tomova, co-senior author and lecturer in Psychology at Cardiff University, who conducted the work while at ��Ī, added: “Loneliness among adolescents around the world has nearly doubled in recent years. The need for social interaction is especially intense during adolescence, but it is not clear whether online socialising can fulfil this need.

“This study has shown that digital interactions might not mitigate some of the deep-rooted effects that isolation appears to have on teenagers.”

Scientists say the findings might shed light on the link between loneliness and mental health conditions such as anxiety disorders, which are on the rise in young people.

Notes

*For example, in 2023 the U.S. Surgeon General declared an epidemic of loneliness and isolation.

**Electrodes placed on the fingers record small deflections in sweat and subsequent changes in electrical conductivity of the skin (electrodermal activity). Electrodermal activity is used to detect stress levels and increases with emotional or physical arousal.

***The baseline tests were always taken first. The order of the two isolation sessions was randomly allocated. For sessions with digital interactions allowed, most participants used social media (35 out of 40), with texting being the most common form of interaction (37 out of 40). Other popular platforms included Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Participants mainly connected virtually with friends (38), followed by family (19), romantic partners (13), and acquaintances (4).

**** Average self-reported loneliness more than doubled after the isolation session with social media compared to baseline and nearly tripled after the complete isolation session compared to baseline.

Yes

Young people who experience bullying are more likely to fantasise about committing acts of violence – study

fpjl2 — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 08:33:56 +0000

While research has shown that significant numbers of people fantasise about inflicting harm, little is known about the processes behind such 'violent ideations'.

A team led by a ��Ī professor tracked the self-reported thoughts and experiences of 1,465 young people from schools across the Swiss city of Zurich at the ages of 15, 17 and 20.

Researchers gathered data on whether violent thoughts had occurred in the last 30 days, and the types of bullying or aggression experienced over the last 12 months.

They used questionnaires to probe the levels of aggression (humiliation, beatings, murder) and imagined targets (strangers, friends) within young people’s darkest fantasies.

The team also asked about experiences of 23 forms of 'victimisation', such as taunts, physical attacks and sexual harassment by peers, aggressive parenting – yelling, slapping, hitting with a belt – and dating violence eg being pressured into sex.

While the majority of teenagers had been victimised in at least one way, experiencing a range of mistreatment was 'closely associated' with a higher likelihood of thinking about killing, attacking or humiliating others.

Boys were more prone to violent thinking in general, but the effect of multiple victimisations on violent fantasies was very similar in both sexes.

Among 17-year-old boys who had not been victimised in the preceding year, the probability of violent fantasies in the last month was 56%.

With every additional type of mistreatment, the probability of violent fantasies increased by up to 8%. Those who listed five forms of victimisation had an 85% probability of having had violent fantasies; for those who listed ten it was 97%.

Among girls the same age, no victimisation experience had a violent fantasy probability of 23%, which increased to 59% in those who listed five types of mistreatment, and 73% in those who said they had suffered ten.

“One way to think about fantasies is as our brain rehearsing future scenarios,” said Prof Manuel Eisner, Director of ��Ī’s Violence Research Centre and lead author of the study published in the journal Aggressive Behavior.

“The increased violent fantasies among those who experience bullying or mistreatment may be a psychological mechanism to help prepare them for violence to come,” he said.

“These fantasies of hitting back at others may have roots deep in human history, from a time when societies were much more violent, and retribution – or the threat of it – was an important form of protection.”

According to Eisner, the research hints at the extent of violent ideation in societies as seemingly peaceful as Switzerland – with murderous thoughts surprisingly commonplace.

“About 25% of all 17-year-old boys and 13% of girls reported having at least one fantasy of killing a person they know during the past 30 days. Close to one in five of all the study participants at that age. These thoughts may be deeply troubling to those who experience them,” he said.

The team – including researchers from the University of Zurich, University of Edinburgh, University of Utrecht, University of Leiden, and Universidad de la Republica – collected and analysed a wealth of data.

As such, they were able to filter out and ‘control’ for other possible triggers for violent thinking in the teenagers. For example, they found that socio-economic status played little role in violent fantasy rates.

The study also shows that 'adverse life events' such as financial troubles or parental separation had no significant impact. “Thoughts of killing others are triggered by experiences of interpersonal harm-doing, attacks on our personal identity, rather than noxious stimuli more generally,” said Eisner.

“It’s the difference between conditions that make people angry and upset, and those that make people vengeful.”

By following most of the teenagers to the cusp of adulthood, researchers could track patterns over several years. Overall rates of the most extreme thoughts decreased by the age of 20: only 14% of young men and 5.5% of women had thought about killing someone they know in the past month.

However, the effects of victimisation on violent fantasies did not lessen as they grew up, suggesting the intensity of this psychological mechanism may not fade.

“This study did not examine whether violent ideations caused by victimisation actually lead to violent behaviour. However, a consistent finding across criminology is that victims often become offenders, and vice versa,” said Eisner.

“Fantasies are unrestrained, and the vengeance taken in our minds is often wildly disproportionate to the real-world event which triggered it.

“Studying the mechanisms behind violent fantasies, particularly at a young age, may help with targeted interventions that can stop obsessive rumination turning horribly real.”

Experiencing bullying and forms of aggression in late adolescence and early adulthood is linked to a marked increase in the likelihood of having daydreams or fantasies about hurting or killing people, according to a new study.

It’s the difference between conditions that make people angry and upset, and those that make people vengeful

Manuel Eisner

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Pandemic restrictions aggravating known triggers for self-harm and poor mental health among children and young people

cjb250 — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 23:30:04 +0000

Writing in The BMJ, Professor Tamsin Ford at the ��Ī and colleagues say deterioration in mental health is clearest among families already struggling and call for urgent action “to ensure that this generation is not disproportionately disadvantaged by COVID-19.”

They point to evidence that the mental health of the UK’s children and young people was deteriorating before the pandemic, while health, educational, and social outcomes for children with mental health conditions were worse in the 21st century than the late 20th century. For example, between 2004 and 2017 anxiety, depression, and self-harm increased, particularly among teenage girls.

Given that self-harm is an important risk factor for suicide, it is not surprising that rates of suicide among the UK’s children and young people also increased in recent years, they write, though numbers remain low compared with other age groups - about 100 people aged under 18 died by suicide each year in England between 2014 and 2016.

Studies carried out during the pandemic suggest that although some families are coping well, others are facing financial adversity, struggling to home school, and risk experiencing vicious cycles of increasing stress and distress.

Probable mental health conditions increased from 11% in 2017 to 16% in July 2020 across all age, sex, and ethnic groups according to England’s Mental Health of Children and Young People Survey (MHCYP). In addition, a sample of 2,673 parents recruited through social media reported deteriorating mental health and increased behavioural problems among children aged 4 to 11 years between March and May 2020 (during lockdown) but reduced emotional symptoms among 11-16 year olds.

The more socioeconomically deprived respondents had consistently worse mental health in both surveys, note the authors - a stark warning given that economic recession is expected to increase the numbers of families under financial strain.

The authors acknowledge that deteriorating mental health is by no means uniform. For example, a sizeable proportion of 19,000 8-18 year olds from 237 English schools surveyed during early summer 2020 reported feeling happier, while a quarter of young people in the MHCYP survey reported that lockdown had made their life better.

And while the incidence of self-harm recorded in primary care was substantially lower than expected for 10-17 year olds in April 2020, it returned to pre-pandemic levels by September 2020, with similar patterns detected for all mental health referrals in England.

Data also show a doubling in the number of urgent referrals for eating disorders in England during 2020, despite a smaller increase in non-urgent referrals.

Professor Tamsin Ford from the Department of Psychiatry at the ��Ī said: “Even before the pandemic, we were seeing deteriorating mental health among children and young people, which was amplified by inadequate service provision to support their needs. The lockdown and other measures aimed at tackling the pandemic will only serve to exacerbate these problems – and even more so for some different age groups and socioeconomic circumstances.

“Young people’s lives have been turned upside down by the pandemic, as is the case for lots of people, but their education has also been disrupted and many young people now face an uncertain future. We’re calling on policymakers to recognise the importance of education to social and mental health outcomes alongside an appropriate focus on employment and economic prospects.”

Reference
Ford, T. et al. Mental health of children and young people during pandemic. BMJ; 11 Mar 2020; DOI: 10.1136/bmj.n614

Adapted from a press release by The BMJ

Experts have issued a stark warning about the effects of the pandemic on the mental health of children and young people.

Even before the pandemic, we were seeing deteriorating mental health among children and young people, which was amplified by inadequate service provision to support their needs

Tamsin Ford

Kelly Sikkema

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Brain networks come ‘online’ during adolescence to prepare teenagers for adult life

cjb250 — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 10:18:17 +0000

Adolescence is a time of major change in life, with increasing social and cognitive skills and independence, but also increased risk of mental illness. While it is clear that these changes in the mind must reflect developmental changes in the brain, it has been unclear how exactly the function of the human brain matures as people grow up from children to young adults.

A team based in the ��Ī and University College London has published a major new research study that helps us understand more clearly the development of the adolescent brain.

The study collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data on brain activity from 298 healthy young people, aged 14-25 years, each scanned on one to three occasions about 6 to 12 months apart. In each scanning session, the participants lay quietly in the scanner so that the researchers could analyse the pattern of connections between different brain regions while the brain was in a resting state.

The team discovered that the functional connectivity of the human brain – in other words, how different regions of the brain ‘talk’ to each other – changes in two main ways during adolescence.

The brain regions that are important for vision, movement, and other basic faculties were strongly connected at the age of 14 and became even more strongly connected by the age of 25. This was called a ‘conservative’ pattern of change, as areas of the brain that were rich in connections at the start of adolescence become even richer during the transition to adulthood.

However, the brain regions that are important for more advanced social skills, such as being able to imagine how someone else is thinking or feeling (so-called theory of mind), showed a very different pattern of change. In these regions, connections were redistributed over the course of adolescence: connections that were initially weak became stronger, and connections that were initially strong became weaker. This was called a ‘disruptive’ pattern of change, as areas that were poor in their connections became richer, and areas that were rich became poorer.

By comparing the fMRI results to other data on the brain, the researchers found that the network of regions that showed the disruptive pattern of change during adolescence had high levels of metabolic activity typically associated with active re-modelling of connections between nerve cells.

Dr Petra Vértes, joint senior author of the paper and a Fellow of the mental health research charity MQ, said: “From the results of these brain scans, it appears that the acquisition of new, more adult skills during adolescence depends on the active, disruptive formation of new connections between brain regions, bringing new brain networks ‘online’ for the first time to deliver advanced social and other skills as people grow older.”

Professor Ed Bullmore, joint senior author of the paper and head of the Department of Psychiatry at ��Ī, said: “We know that depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders often occur for the first time in adolescence – but we don't know why. These results show us that active re-modelling of brain networks is ongoing during the teenage years and deeper understanding of brain development could lead to deeper understanding of the causes of mental illness in young people.”

Measuring functional connectivity in the brain presents particular challenges, as Dr František Váša, who led the study as a Gates ��Ī Trust PhD Scholar, and is now at King’s College London, explained.

“Studying brain functional connectivity with fMRI is tricky as even the slightest head movement can corrupt the data – this is especially problematic when studying adolescent development as younger people find it harder to keep still during the scan,” he said. “Here, we used three different approaches for removing signatures of head movement from the data, and obtained consistent results, which made us confident that our conclusions are not related to head movement, but to developmental changes in the adolescent brain.”

The study was supported by the Wellcome Trust.

Reference
Váša, F et al. Conservative and disruptive modes of adolescent change in human brain functional connectivity. PNAS; 28 Jan 2020; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1906144117

New brain networks come ‘online’ during adolescence, allowing teenagers to develop more complex adult social skills, but potentially putting them at increased risk of mental illness, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"The acquisition of new, more adult skills during adolescence depends on the active, disruptive formation of new connections between brain regions, bringing new brain networks ‘online’ for the first time to deliver advanced social and other skills as people grow older"

Petra Vertes

Frantisek Vasa

Brain development during adolescence: red brain regions belong to the “conservative” pattern of adolescent development, while the blue brain regions belong to the “disruptive” pattern

Yes

Cuts to mental health services putting young people at risk, say experts

cjb250 — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 12:18:05 +0000

In an article published today in the Journal of Public Mental Health, the team discuss the policy implications of their study published earlier in the year, which found that young people who have contact with mental health services in the community and in clinics are significantly less likely to suffer from clinical depression later in their adolescence than those with equivalent difficulties who do not receive treatment.

Young people’s mental health problems are associated with an increased risk of problems later on in adulthood, including poor mental health, lower income, unemployment, inability to maintain a stable cohabiting relationship, and greater contact with the criminal justice system. However, the team’s previous study suggested that access for adolescents with mental health problems to intervention in schools and clinics reduces mental health problems up to three years later and would therefore yield personal, economic, and societal benefits over an individual’s lifespan.

In the study, Sharon Neufeld and colleagues from the Department of Psychiatry at the ��Ī used data obtained between 2005-2010 – prior to funding cuts to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in the community and in NHS clinics. Between 2008 and 2013, funding for the services dropped by 5.4 per cent in real terms so that in 2012/2013, only 6 per cent of the NHS’ total mental health budget was spent on these services. The knock-on effect of this was that while in 2005/2006, 38% of 14-year olds with a mental disorder had made contact with mental health provision for young people in the past year, in 2014/2015 only 25% of all children and young people with a mental disorder had made such service contact.

One consequence of this has been that the number of young people attending A&E due to a psychiatric condition had doubled by 2014/2015, compared with 2010/2011.

“It’s important to improve young people’s mental health services in schools and strengthen the care pathway to specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, in order to meet the NHS target of returning contact back up to 35% by 2020/2021,” says Mrs Neufeld.

“We need to acknowledge the mental health suffering in our young people that has only been increasingly apparent in recent years, and resolve to improve young people’s access to effective mental health services.”

She and her colleagues argue that as well as protecting funding for specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, funding for school-based counselling is also important as their study found that this was the second most used service for young people with a mental health disorder.

“The current government has promised to provide funding for mental health first aid training for teachers in secondary schools, which should enable them to better identify those with mental health issues and connect students to the appropriate support services,” says Professor Peter Jones. “But this is against a backdrop of freezing school budgets, the very budgets that typically fund school-based counselling.

“Funding for school-based counselling must be ring-fenced, whether it be funded through the education sector or NHS, to ensure young people have adequate service access prior to specialist mental health services.”

The researchers also argue that GPs could use more training in identifying mental disorder. The Royal College of General Practitioners reports that nine out of ten people with mental health problems are managed in primary care. However, even in the recent past, most GPs do not include a rotation in mental illness as part of their training. Such gaps in training, say the researchers, mean that GPs correctly identify less than a half (47%) of depression cases.

“This is a huge missed opportunity,” adds Professor Ian Goodyer. “GPs will encounter a large number of individuals with mental disorders, but have insufficient background knowledge to appropriately identify such cases.”

Reference
Sharon AS Neufeld, Peter B Jones and Ian M. Goodyer. Child and adolescent mental health services: longitudinal data sheds light on current policy for psychological interventions in the community. Journal of Public Mental Health; Date; DOI 10.1108/JPMH-03-2017-0013

Funding cuts and austerity measures are damaging young people’s access to mental health services, with potentially long-term consequences for their mental wellbeing, say researchers at the ��Ī.

We need to acknowledge the mental health suffering in our young people that has only been increasingly apparent in recent years, and resolve to improve young people’s access to effective mental health services.

Sharon Neufeld

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Teenagers who access mental health services see significant improvements, study shows

cjb250 — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 10:00:46 +0000

The study, published in Lancet Psychiatry, found that 14-year-old adolescents who had contact with mental health services had a greater decrease in depressive symptoms than those with similar difficulties but without contact. By the age of 17, the odds of reporting clinical depression were more than seven times higher in individuals without contact than in service users who had been similarly depressed at baseline.

Researchers from the Department of Psychiatry recruited 1,238 14-year-old adolescents and their primary caregivers from secondary schools in ��Īshire, and followed them up at the age of 17. Their mental state and behaviour was assessed by trained researchers, while the teenagers self-reported their depressive symptoms. Of the participants, 126 (11%) had a current mental illness at start of the study – and only 48 (38%) of these had had contact with mental health services in the year prior to recruitment.

Contact with mental health services appeared to be of such value that after three years the levels of depressive symptoms of service users with a mental disorder were similar to those of 996 unaffected individuals.

“Mental illness can be a terrible burden on individuals, but our study shows clearly that if we intervene at an early stage, we can see potentially dramatic improvements in adolescents’ symptoms of depression and reduce the risk that they go on to develop severe depressive illness,” says Sharon Neufeld, first author of the study and a research associate at in the Department of Psychiatry.

The ��Ī study is believed to be the first study in adolescents to support the role of contact with mental health services in improving mental health by late adolescence. Previous studies have reported that mental health service use has provided little or no benefit to adolescents, but the researchers argue that this may be because the design of those studies did not consider whether service users had a mental disorder or not. The approach taken on this new study enabled it to compare as closely as possible to present study statistically-balanced treated versus untreated individuals with a mental disorder a randomised control trial.

The researchers say their study highlights the need to improve access to mental health services for children and adolescents. Figures published in 2015 show that NHS spending on children’s mental health services in the UK has fallen by 5.4% in real terms since 2010 to £41 million, despite an increase in demand. This has led to an increase in referrals and waiting times and an increase in severe cases that require longer stays in inpatient facilities.

On 9 January this year, the Prime Minister announced plans to transform the way we deal with mental illness in the UK at every stage of a person’s life – not just in our hospitals, but in our classrooms, at work and in our communities – adding: “This starts with ensuring that children and young people get the help and support they need and deserve – because we know that mental illness too often starts in childhood and that when left untreated, can blight lives, and become entrenched.”

Professor Ian Goodyer, who led the study, has cautiously welcomed the commitment from the Prime Minister and her Government. “The emphasis going forward should be on early detection and intervention to help mentally-ill teens in schools, where there is now an evidence base for psychosocial intervention,” he says. “We need to ensure, however, that there is a clear pathway for training and supervision of school-based psychological workers and strong connections to NHS child and adolescent mental health services for those teens who will need additional help.

“As always, the devil is in the detail. The funding of services and how the effectiveness of intervention is monitored will be critical if we are to reduce mental illness risks over the adolescent years. With the right measures and school-based community infrastructure, I believe this can be achieved.”

The research was funded by Wellcome and the National Institute for Health Research.

Reference
Neufeld, S et al. Reduction in adolescent depression after contact with mental health services: a longitudinal cohort study in the UK. Lancet Psychiatry; 10 Jan 2017; DOI: 10.1016/S2215-0366(17)30002-0

Young people with mental health problems who have contact with mental health services are significantly less likely to suffer from clinical depression later in their adolescence than those with equivalent difficulties who do not receive treatment, according to new research from the ��Ī. This comes as Prime Minister Theresa May announced measures to improve mental health support at every stage of a person’s life, with an emphasis on early intervention for children and young people.

If we intervene at an early stage, we can see potentially dramatic improvements in adolescents’ symptoms of depression and reduce the risk that they go on to develop severe depressive illness

Sharon Neufeld

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