'Mind the Kids': an ACAMH podcast

Latest Episodes:

WACIT; Refugee Mental Health and the Impact of Trauma Jun 22, 2022

Show notes

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.20476
For this podcast, for Refugee Week, we are joined by Professor Panos Vostanis, professor of Child Mental Health at the University of Leicester, and founder of the organisation World Awareness for Children in Trauma (WACIT).
As an expert in the impact of trauma on child and adolescent mental health, Panos sets the scene by talking to us about trauma as it relates to child refugees and other young people in conflict.
Panos then turns to his work at WACIT and details what WACIT is and the goals of the organisation, before detailing some of the training services for CAMH professionals who work with refugees, asylum-seekers, and other vulnerable groups.
With WACIT also running interventions for children and young people themselves, Panos further discusses the work they have done with children and young people who are refugees or living in conflict zones, and shares what the outcomes were like.
As one of the aims of WACIT is to develop evidence based psychosocial interventions and capacity building for children living in conflict and disadvantage, Panos comments on what the evidence shows to be the best approach to take when it comes to working with children and adolescent refugees who’ve experienced significant trauma.
Furthermore, Panos talks us through two new projects aimed at improving services for refugee children internationally and shares his message to policymakers.

Therapeutic Engagement with Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Minors Jun 20, 2022

Show notes

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.20426
For this podcast, for Refugee Week, we are joined by Dr. Hayley Rajpal, a child and adolescent psychotherapist with a specialism in working with looked after children and their networks. Hayley’s thesis research explored the challenges of therapeutic engagement with unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors, and this will be the focus of the podcast.
To set the scene, Hayley provides a brief overview of psychotherapy before turning to detail how she came to be interested in child and adolescent mental health as it relates to refugees and asylum seekers.
Turning to Hayley’s studies, where she explored the experiences of care networks providing therapeutic support to unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors, Hayley shares some of the main takeaways from her thesis.
Furthermore, having touched on the impact of difference and diversity, plus racism and media perceptions, Hayley also shares what issues have arisen around difference and diversity when it comes to the provision of care for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young adults.

COMET; Student Mental Health and Single-Session Interventions Jun 06, 2022

Show notes

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.20329
For this podcast, we are joined by Dr. Maria Loades, clinical psychologist and senior lecturer at the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath.
The focus of this podcast is on the Common Elements Toolbox (COMET), a study testing a digital intervention to help university students improve their wellbeing.
To set the scene, Maria provides us with an insight into what the COMET programme entails and describes some of the specific interventions that are being tested.
With the programme targeted at students, Maria details why she has chosen to focus on this particular demographic and discusses student mental health as well as the impact that the pandemic has had on students entering university.
As COMET was originally developed in the US, Maria shares what is already known about the COMET intervention from the USA, plus comments on the difference between COMET GB and COMET US, including adaptations to account for cultural differences.
Furthermore, Maria talks to us about the online survey itself, who the participants are, how they are recruiting participants, how many participants are needed, plus the timescale.

Language Regression, Communication Development, and Autism May 23, 2022

Show notes

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.20231
In this podcast, we talk to Dr. Mandy Steiman, clinical psychologist at the Azrieli Centre for Autism Research (ACAR) at the McGill University Health center.
The focus of this podcast is on the JCPP paper ‘Predictors of language regression and its association with subsequent communication development in children with autism’ (doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13565)
As co-author of the paper, Mandy sets the scene by detailing what they looked at in this study and gives us a summary.
Mandy provides clarification, and a definition, as to what language regression looks like, before turning to the methodology used for the research.
Mandy then shares the key findings from the paper and elaborates on her findings that children with language regression walked earlier and spoke their first word nearly a year sooner than the children without regression, and that language regression may have decreased impact over time, and that regressive patterns are not associated with worse outcomes.
Mandy further discusses what the implications are of these findings for families, and those assessing children and young people for autism, plus emphasises the importance of not ignoring language regressions.

Adolescent gender diversity: sociodemographic correlates & mental health outcomes May 09, 2022

Show notes

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.20057
In this podcast, we are joined by Akhgar Ghassabian, Assistant Professor at the Departments of Pediatrics, Population Health, and Environmental Medicine at NYU School of Medicine, and Dr. Tonya White, Professor at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam.
The focus of this podcast is on the JCPP paper ‘Adolescent gender diversity: sociodemographic correlates and mental health outcomes in the general population’ (doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13588).
Akhgar and Tonya set the scene by detailing what their study looked at, providing us with a summary of the paper, plus insight into what methodology they used, before sharing some of the key findings from the research.
In their paper, Akhgar and Tonya point to an association between gender diversity and mental health symptoms in adolescents, and in this podcast, Tonya elaborates on the relationship between the two.
Akhgar and Tonya then comment on their finding that more females were likely to have a gender-variant experience than males, and that adolescents with gender-variant experience appear to have higher autistic trait scores in the study. Akhgar and Tonya also highlight what implications, if any, can be drawn from these findings.
With this study showing that, whilst less than 1% of parents reported that their children had gender-variant experience, 4% of children reported this, Akhgar and Tonya discuss why parents may often be unaware of gender diverse feelings in their adolescence and how parental awareness or attitudes make a difference in terms of mental health outcomes, before exploring what the implications are of their findings for CAMH professionals.

Late-diagnosed Autistic Children: Mental Health & Social Difficulties May 03, 2022

Show notes

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.19889
In this podcast, we talk to Will Mandy, Professor of Neurodevelopmental Conditions at the research department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at University College London (UCL).
The focus of this podcast is on the JCPP paper, ‘Mental health and social difficulties of late-diagnosed autistic children, across childhood and adolescence’ (doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13587)

Will is the first author of this paper and sets the scene by clarifying what constitutes as ‘late diagnosis’ when talking about autism in children, before turning to the paper itself and providing a summary of what they looked at in this study.
Will talks us through the methodology used and shares an overview of the findings, including further insight into why some children get missed and the role of diagnostic overshadowing. Will also mentions that girls were overrepresented in the late diagnosis group and explores why this might be the case.
With this study showing that the late diagnosed group had milder problems in early childhood, presumably making them harder to identify, Will comments on what more could be done to find, assess and correctly diagnose children, before discussing what the implications are of his findings for CAMH professionals.

Destigmatizing Perceptions About Black Adolescent Depression Apr 25, 2022

Show notes

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.19898
For this podcast, we are joined by Dr. Andrés Martin, Riva Ariella Ritvo Professor at the Child Study Center, and director of the simulated participant program, SPP, Teaching and Learning Center TLC, Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Jose Paez, also of the Yale Child Study Center, and Dr. Doron Amsalem, child and adolescent psychiatrist and Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University.

The focus is on their co-authored paper “Destigmatizing Perceptions About Black Adolescent Depression, Randomized Control Trial of Brief Social Contact-based Video Interventions” (doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13570), recently published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (JCPP).
Andrés sets the scene by providing a summary of their paper, detailing what they looked at in this study and why it was important to focus on Black adolescents in relation to depression.
Doron details the methodology used for this paper and describes the types of brief contact-based video interventions that were used in the trial, before discussing what differences they found in terms of stigmatised attitudes and help seeing intentions between the different groups featured in the study.
Andrés then provides insight into the kind of experiences that were described in the script that the participants watched, before Jose explains what a race by intervention interaction entailed in the context of this research.
Andrés and Doron share additional findings, including the importance of the exposure and dissemination of people’s lived experiences in terms of stigma, before Andrés and Jose discuss the implications of their findings for CAMH professionals working with racially stigmatized groups.
Furthermore, we hear about follow up research, including their work with transgender youth as well as using TikTok to help reduce stigma and to encourage people to seek help.

Climate change-related worry, engagement, and mental health Apr 19, 2022

Show notes

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.19805
In this podcast, we are joined by Dr. Emma Sciberras, Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and Dr. Julian Fernando, a lecturer in the same department.
The focus of this podcast is on their co-authored paper, ‘Climate change-related worry among Australian adolescents: an eight-year longitudinal study’ (doi: 10.1111/camh.12521) , published in the CAMH 2022 Special Issue on ‘Child and youth mental health & the global ecological crisis’.
Emma and Julian begin by providing an overview of their paper, detailing the methodology used, and sharing some of the key findings.
Whilst the paper determined that both the high persistent and increasing worry group reported greater engagement with news and politics, only those in the persistent worry group had higher depression symptoms. Emma and Julian provide insight into how they differentiated between high persistent and increasing worry, and discuss whether those with increasing worry are on a trajectory to become persistently worried.
Emma and Julian also discuss how the relationship between engaging with the news and politics and levels of worry and depression feed into one another and explore whether greater societal engagement is a healthy way of managing eco anxiety.
Following their finding that worrying about climate change may be associated with poorer mental health, but also greater political engagement, Emma and Julian share their advice for young people and their parents, comment on the implications of their findings for professionals working with young people and their families, plus reflect on what message policy makers should take from their findings.

Pupil size and pupillary light reflex in early infancy Apr 11, 2022

Show notes

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.19791
In this podcast we talk to Ana Maria Portugal, Developmental Neuroscientist and postdoctoral researcher in developmental behaviour genetics at the Centre of Neurodevelopmental Disorders at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Ana was the first author of the recent Open Access JCPP paper, ‘Pupil size and pupillary light reflex in early infancy: heritability and link to genetic liability to schizophrenia’

Ana sets the scene with a summary of the paper highlighting what is currently known about the link between pupillary light reflex and hereditary neurodevelopmental conditions.
Ana discusses the methodology, key findings, including some surprising results relating to the association between the pupil measures and the polygenic score for autism. Plus of course Ana looks at the implications that the study has for researchers and clinicians, and what the next phase for research will be.

ADHD, Comorbidity, and Longitudinal Research Apr 04, 2022

Show notes

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.19695
For this podcast, we are joined by Dr. Aja Murray, lecturer in psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and winner of ACAMH’s Kathy Sylva ‘Rising Star’ Award 2021.

Aja begins by providing us with an insight into her background, her research interests, and her role as a developmental psychologist who specializes in mental health, before commenting on what it meant to her to have received the ACAMH ‘Rising Star’ Award in 2021, for best scientific contribution to child and adolescent mental health by a person within 10 years of their first published paper in a peer-reviewed journal.
With Aja’s primary research interests relating to the developmental aspects of mental health phenotypes and their comorbidity, with a particular interest in ADHD, autism, and conduct problems, Aja shares some recent highlights from her work.
As the deputy director of the Evidence for Better Lives Study, Aja also discloses the aims of this study, plus their findings so far. In addition, Aja also mentions her work with the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood with a focus on violence prevention. Aja also details further projects that she has been involved in, including securing grants for a project supporting student mental health, and another to address the adverse impacts of domestic violence during pregnancy.
Furthermore, Aja comments on the translation of evidence-based research into practice, why evidence-based research is so important when it comes to child and young people’s mental health, plus what can be done to disseminate and promote evidence-based science.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

‘Mind the Kids’: an ACAMH podcast

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected