These findings suggest that drop-in mental health services are effective, acceptable, and can be delivered at low cost for young people with long term conditions. This model can help increase access to evidence-based mental health treatment in paediatric healthcare settings 👏
As well as helping young people, parental depression and anxiety significantly improved and high levels of satisfaction were reported. The average wait time for an initial assessment was 13.42 days and the cost per patient was approximately half of a typical course of psychological therapy.
❗New publication! Drop-in mental health services were set up for young people with physical health conditions at 6 paediatric hospitals in England. Accessing these services led to significant reductions in emotional & behavioural symptoms & improved quality of life link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Stadia RCT publication
📣 New Research! It took 6 years but we got there!
The STADIA trial reports…
What we did: Large multi-centre #RCT with 1225 children and young people with emotional difficulties referred to #CAMHS across England, followed-up for 18 months.
6 Headline findings… see below… (1/7)
“universal school-based [mental health] prevention is less effective than targeted approaches, often leads to null or unsustained positive effects, has the potential to elicit negative effects and is not well liked by young people.”
acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Abstract There is an urgent need to improve mental health outcomes among young people. One approach taken to address this problem has been the design and delivery of universal school-based prevention, based on therapeutic models such as CBT and mindfulness. Such interventions are delivered to groups of young people, irrespective of risk or need. However, in this commentary, we argue that the initial appeal of universal interventions has not been supported by the evidence: universal school-based prevention is less effective than targeted approaches, often leads to null or unsustained positive effects, has the potential to elicit negative effects and is not well liked by young people themselves. In addition, many young people in each classroom already meet the criteria for a mental disorder, meaning that prevention approaches may not be appropriate or effective for this group. In this commentary, we respond to Birrell et al.'s (2025) paper by arguing that the field should move away from universal prevention and instead invest our limited resources in the refinement and dissemination of interventions with a stronger evidence base, such as one-to-one, targeted and indirect approaches.
NEW ARTICLE: In this short piece, Jack Andrews and I argue that, based on the evidence we now have, the field should move away from universal school-based mental health interventions and focus on more effective alternatives
acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
summary thread below:
What an evening being shortlisted for the HSJ mental health innovation of the year for our Lucy project, providing access to mental health support for children with long term conditions ⭐️