Advancing the Understanding and Treatment of Anxiety Disorders in Young People – Emanuel Miller International Conference 2025

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Event type Emanuel Miller

FIRST 50 BOOKINGS GET AN EARLY BIRD RATE!
Live stream.
Delegates will have exclusive access to recordings for 90 days after the event, together with slides. Plus you will get a personalised CPD certificate via email.
10:15 - 16:00 UK, 11:15 - 17:00 CET

anxious girl
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Anxiety disorders remain among the most common mental health challenges faced by children and adolescents, demanding ongoing innovation in both research and practice. Despite widespread recognition, critical gaps persist in understanding, diagnosing, and treating these conditions.

This year’s eargerly anticipated Emanuel Miller International Conference brings together leading advancements in anxiety research and treatment, offering attendees insights into innovative approaches and the latest evidence-based practices. It will explore cutting-edge developments in neurobiological mechanisms, cognitive approaches, family-based interventions, integration of digital delivery, and adaptations in neurodiverse young people. A must-attend for professionals dedicated to enhancing outcomes for young people with anxiety disorders.

A phenomenal line-up includes; Professor Cathy Creswell, Associate Professor Tenure Dylan Gee, Dr. Matt Hollocks, Dr. Georgina Krebs, Assistant Professor Eleanor Leigh, Professor David Mataix-Cols, Professor Richard Meiser-Stedman, Dr. Wendy Silverman.

Booking – FIRST 50 BOOKINGS GET AN EARLY BIRD RATE!

Sign up at this link or on the Book Now button at the top of the screen, and complete the form that follows. You’ll then receive an email confirmation and a link to the webinar, plus we’ll send you a calendar reminder nearer the time. Delegates will have exclusive access to recordings for 90 days after the event, together with slides. Plus you will get a personalised CPD certificate via email.

  • ACAMH Members MUST login to book onto the webinar in order to access this webinar and get a CPD certificate
  • Non-members this is a great time to join ACAMH, take a look at what we have to offer, and make the saving on these sessions

£99 Early Bird, then £119 for ACAMH Members (Print, Online, Concession) Join now and save

£159 Early Bird, then £179 for ACAMH Learn Account holders

£159 Early Bird, then £179 for Non Members

£5 for Undergraduate/Postgraduate

FREE ACAMH LMIC Members

Don’t forget as a charity any surplus made is reinvested back as we work to our vision of ‘Sharing best evidence, improving practice’, and our mission to ‘Improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people aged 0-25’. 

About the talks

Professor Cathy Creswell – Making the most of digital approaches (and parents) to increase access to effective prevention and treatment for child anxiety problems
Demand for effective mental health care, and evidence-based psychological therapies in particular, far exceeds the available supply and prevention is typically deprioritised due to a lack of available resources. Digitally augmented approaches provide a potential mechanism to increase the efficiency of CBT delivery but it is critical that we do this without compromising accessibility, engagement and outcomes. This talk will draw on examples from a programme of mixed method studies to develop, evaluate, and implement digitally-augmented approaches in which parents are supported to help their children to prevent or overcome anxiety problems. Throughout the talk I will illustrate the potential of digitally augmented approaches, the challenges that they present (in particular in relation to implementation in routine practice), how we have overcome them so far, and some exciting future directions.

Learning objectives
1. To understand key benefits of integrated digitally augmented treatment approaches into routine mental health care settings.
2. To recognise potential barriers and facilitators for successful implementation of digitally augmented psychological therapies (through clinics and schools).
3. To be aware of examples of successful implementation.

Dr. Matt Hollocks – A Translational Approach to Understanding and Treating Anxiety in Autistic Youth
It is now well established that autistic people disproportionally experience co-occurring mental health difficulties with anxiety being the most prominent. However, the specific processes and risk factors which lead to this elevated prevalence remain unclear. Related to this, we have yet to make good progress in developing treatment approaches which account for the differences seen in autistic people. In this talk I will discuss some factors (Cognitive Flexibility; Social Camouflaging; Sensory experiences) which have been identified as being associated with greater mental health symptoms in autistic youth and how these may guide innovations in the development of more effective and individualised psychological interventions.

Learning objectives
1. To understand the prevalence and impact of anxiety in autistic youth.
2. To understand some of the key mechanisms that may drive anxiety for this group.
3. To explore how this understanding can guide innovations in psychological interventions.

Professor David Mataix-Cols – OCD and related disorders in youth: A brief research update
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a relatively prevalent, childhood-onset condition associated with substantial disability, school failure, alcohol and substance misuse, suicide risk, and high societal costs. In this lecture, I will summarise the latest research on OCD and related disorders, with a focus on risk factors (e.g. childhood infections, bullying and traumatic experiences) and emerging treatment options, such as the development and implementation of digital therapies in regular healthcare.

Learning objectives
1. To learn about the latest research on OCD and related disorders.
2. To understand the concept of familial confounding in the study of risk factors for OCD and related disorders.
3. To learn about emerging treatment options.

Associate Professor Tenure Dylan Gee – Neurobiology of anxiety disorders in young people – Details to follow

Dr. Georgina Krebs – Body dysmorphic disorder and its relation to anxiety disorders in young people – Details to follow

Associate Professor Eleanor Leigh – Social anxiety treatment in adolescents – Details to follow

Professor Richard Meiser-Stedman – Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents – Details to follow

Dr. Wendy Silverman – Family involvement in the treatment of child and adolescent anxiety – Details to follow

About the speakers

cathy cresswell

Cathy Creswell is Professor of Developmental Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford, an Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist in Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, an NIHR Senior Investigator and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She leads The Oxford Psychological Interventions in Children and adolescents (TOPIC) research group which aims to improve outcomes from and access to psychological therapies for common mental health problems in children and young people. Her research particularly focuses on the development, maintenance and treatment of anxiety disorders in children.

Dylan Gee
Associate Professor Tenure Dylan Gee – Understanding how key neural circuits mature in typical development and how these processes go awry in atypical development is critical to the identification and treatment of mental health disorders. Thus, my laboratory bridges clinical, developmental, and neuroscience approaches to delineate the biological state of the developing brain to more effectively treat mental illness. My program of research aims to characterize typical and atypical frontolimbic trajectories across development, elucidate how early environments (e.g., early-life stress) and genetic factors influence sensitive periods in neurodevelopment and risk for psychopathology, and translate knowledge of brain development to optimize clinical interventions for affective psychopathology in childhood and adolescence. A central focus of this work is the nature and development of emotional behavior and related connections between limbic and prefrontal regions in children and adolescents with anxiety and stress-related disorders.
Matt Hollocks

Dr. Hollocks is a Clinical Senior Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist based in the Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, King’s College London and the Service for Complex Autism and Associated Neurodevelopmental Disorders (SCAAND). He has a particular interest in expertise in understanding the common co-occurring mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression experienced by autistic young people. Dr Hollocks has explored several key processes associated with risk for anxiety and depression in autistic youth and has a particular focus on translating mechanistic research into better clinical care for young people with autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions.

Georgina Krebs
Dr. Georgina Krebs is an Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Associate Professor of Young People’s Mental Health and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, at University College London. Her research focuses on identifying mechanisms underpinning certain mental disorders in young people, particularly obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and related conditions. She is also interested in understanding factors that interfere with recovery from these disorders, to inform the development of new treatment approaches. Her research involves a range of methodologies, encompassing behavioural genetics, experimental psychology, epidemiology and clinical trials.
Eleanor Leigh
Associate Professor Eleanor Leigh – I am a Clinical Research Fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, and Honorary Clinical Psychologist at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. My work is focused on improving our understanding and treatment of adolescent anxiety disorders, and social anxiety disorder in particular. To do this, I use a broad range of methods, including experimental and prospective methods, meta-analysis, and clinical trial designs. My research looks at: the cognitive and behavioural mechanisms of adolescent social anxiety disorder; psychological therapies for adolescent social anxiety disorder; improving access to psychological therapies; how social anxiety affects academic achievement; the peer environment and social anxiety in adolescence; and parental influences on the maintenance of social anxiety in youth. My work has been supported by the Wellcome Trust and the NIHR. Previously I worked as a Clinical Psychologist at National & Specialist Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) at The Maudsley Hospital, London. I teach and train on a number of national training courses, including Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (DClinPsy) and CYP-IAPT courses. I am on the advisory board of JCPP Advances and the Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry.

David Mataix-Cols

Professor Mataix-Cols a clinical psychologist, specializes in the study and treatment of OCD and related disorders across the lifespan. He completed his PhD in 1999 and held positions at Imperial College London and King’s College London, becoming a full professor in 2012. In 2013, he joined Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm where he leads a research group and helped set up a specialist clinic. Much of his team’s current research involves the development of digital tools for the dissemination of psychological therapies for young people. He is a highly cited scientist with over 400 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Richard Meiser-Stedman

Professor Richard Meiser-Stedman has studied PTSD in children and teenagers since 2000. He studied for his PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, where he was funded by a Medical Research Council (MRC) research studentship. He was awarded a Peggy Pollak Research Fellowship in Developmental Psychiatry to undertake further postdoctoral research into childhood PTSD, with a particular focus on PTSD in young and preschool children. He completed his clinical psychology training at the Institute of Psychiatry. From 2009 to 2014 Dr Meiser-Stedman was an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellow at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. While there he led the ASPECTS study, looking at whether PTSD in children and adolescents can be successfully treated using cognitive therapy in the early aftermath of a trauma. He was also awarded an MRC Centenary Award Grant to conduct a pilot trial looking at the treatment of PTSD following multiple traumas in children and adolescents. He is a co-investigator on the PYCES trial (the treatment of PTSD in preschool children) and the PROTECT study (looking at how families shape children’s responses to trauma). Dr Meiser-Stedman joined University of East Anglia in October 2014. From 2016 to 2020 Dr Meiser-Stedman undertook an NIHR Career Development Fellowship. This Fellowship focused on evaluating the efficacy of cognitive therapy for PTSD in children and adolescents who have been exposed to multiple traumas.

Wendy K. Silverman
Dr. Wendy Silverman is the Alfred A. Messer Professor of Child Psychiatry and Director of the Yale Child Study Center Anxiety and Mood Disorders Program, and Professor of Psychology. Dr. Silverman’s research focuses on the development/maintenance of anxiety and mood disorders and developing/testing treatments to alleviate them. She has published widely in the field and has served as principal investigator/co-investigator of many National Institute of Health research grants. She has contributed to the profession by serving as Chairperson and member of federal grant review panels, and as Associate Editor and Editor of major scientific journals in clinical psychology. Dr. Silverman has been recognized for her mentoring including being a past recipient of a NIMH midcareer research-mentoring award.

Booking

Sign up at this link or on the Book Now button at the top of the screen, and complete the form that follows. You’ll then receive an email confirmation and a link to the webinar, plus we’ll send you a calendar reminder nearer the time. Delegates will have exclusive access to recordings for 90 days after the event, together with slides. Plus you will get a personalised CPD certificate via email.

  • ACAMH Members MUST login to book onto the webinar in order to access this webinar and get a CPD certificate
  • Non-members this is a great time to join ACAMH, take a look at what we have to offer, and make the saving on these sessions

FIRST 50 BOOKINGS GET AN EARLY BIRD RATE!

£99 Early Bird, then £119 for ACAMH Members (Print, Online, Concession) Join now and save

£159 Early Bird, then £179 for ACAMH Learn Account holders

£159 Early Bird, then £179 for Non Members

£5 for Undergraduate/Postgraduate

FREE ACAMH LMIC Members

Don’t forget as a charity any surplus made is reinvested back as we work to our vision of ‘Sharing best evidence, improving practice’, and our mission to ‘Improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people aged 0-25’.