Health
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Dr. Gordon Bates
Dr. Gordon Bates is a consultant child psychiatrist interested in the interaction between culture, young people and mental illness. He works for the NHS in the West Midlands and has recently completed his PhD in medical humanities. He is an Associate Editor of CAMH, responsible for the Narrative Matters section.
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Being and Becoming Mentally Healthy: A framework for understanding the mental health of babies and young children
Although there is increasing interest and investment in infant mental health, the term itself is not well understood. To support professionals to work together to protect and promote babies’ and young children’s mental health, we have worked with UNICEF-UK to create a new framework describing what it means to be mentally healthy in this life stage. The framework has two parts, “Being” and “Becoming” capturing both babies’ and young children’s current mental health as well as the capacities they are developing that will enable them to be mentally healthy in the future.
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Developing schools to enhance young people’s mental health
Research has shown that many risk factors influence young people’s mental health needs, one of which is school expectations. The youth mental health crisis continues, with one in six young people (aged 6-16) having a probable mental health problem. My research aimed to determine what young people thought of their mental health strategy. However, the way in which the research process developed suggests schools have much more to offer than just specific mental health support.
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Investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on older adolescents’ psychological wellbeing and self-identified cognitive difficulties
Open Access paper from JCPP Advances – ‘The COVID-19 pandemic coincides with growing concern regarding the mental health of young people. […] At three timepoints, independent samples of young people aged 16–18 years completed an online survey. Data collection coincided with periods of lockdown and young people returning to school. The survey assessed subjective impacts of the pandemic on overall wellbeing, anxiety and cognitive function.’ Meg Attwood (pic) et al.
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Socioeconomic disadvantage and high-effort coping in childhood: evidence of skin-deep resilience
Paper from the JCPP – ‘The current study hypothesized that skin-deep resilience – a pattern wherein socioeconomic disadvantage is linked to better mental health but worse physical health for individuals with John Henryism high-effort coping – is already present in childhood.’ Katherine B. Ehrlich (pic) et al.
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Editorial Perspective: When is a ‘small effect’ actually large and impactful?
Open Access paper from the JCPP – ‘In this short review, we utilise simulations to demonstrate that a relatively small shift in mean scores on mental health measures can indicate a large shift in the number of cases of anxiety and depression when scaled up to an entire population. This shows that ‘small’ effect sizes can in some contexts be large and impactful.’ Emma Grace Carey et al.
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Review: Improving access to mental health interventions for children from birth to five years: A Scoping Review
Paper from our CAMH journal – ‘Mental health services specifically designed for children 0–5 years are vital; however, little is known about how these services ensure access for infants at risk of mental health difficulties and their families. This scoping review seeks to address this knowledge gap’. Lyndal Hickey (pic) et al.
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Editorial Perspective: Missing the context: The challenge of social inequalities to school-based mental health interventions
Open Access paper from JCPP Advances – ‘We describe how social inequalities present a challenge to designing school-based interventions for prevention and promotion for mental health and wellbeing, and suggest priorities to aid and evaluate their effectiveness’. Karen L. Mansfield (pic) et al.
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Practitioner Review: Differential susceptibility theory: might it help in understanding and treating mental health problems in youth?
Open Access paper from the JCPP – ‘The purpose of this review is to focus on the differential susceptibility theory as an alternative explanation of individual differences in mental health and examine its relevance in the treatment of mental health problems in young people’. Elham Assary et al.
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Changes in UK pre-schooler’s mental health symptoms over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: Data from Co-SPYCE study
Open Access paper from JCPP Advances – ‘We conducted an intensive longitudinal, but not nationally representative, study to examine trajectories of pre-schoolers’ mental symptoms in the United Kingdom during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.’ Peter J. Lawrence (pic) et al.
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