A big thank you to our partners National Academy for Social Prescribing, Southbank Centre, Prudence Trust and @uclenterprise.bsky.social, all our fantastic speakers including @danhayesphd.bsky.social and @lousticp.bsky.social, plus attendees in the room and online in the UK and internationally 🌍

Thanks so much ASPIRE (Australian Social Prescribing Institute of Research and Education) for allowing me to share my keynote reflections on youth social prescribing: learning from the UK on practice and research
@ucl-sbb.bsky.social

Youth mental health difficulties have increased in prevalence (rather than better awareness) and key drivers likely include economic precarity, smartphone use, sleep quality and closure of youth services. An excellent piece of research led by @olademk.bsky.social

Understanding young people’s declining mental health - Youth Futures Foundation Exploring drivers of worsening mental health among 14-24 year olds through a first-of-its-kind study for England

Very important report out today from the Youth Futures Foundation exploring factors accounting for escalating mental health problems in young people. Lead by fantastic colleagues from the University of Manchester (@olademk.bsky.social et al). Report here: youthfuturesfoundation.org/what-we-do/f...

First plenary: Tom Osborne: Accessible, community-based youth mental health at scale: what can Africa teach us?

Kicking off #ESCAP with some jazz

Tens of thousands defy Hungary’s ban on Pride in protest against Orbán Crackdown on Pride is part of effort to curb democratic freedoms ahead of a hotly-contested election next year

Legends.

#Pride #PrideMonth 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

a cartoon of a pikachu with its mouth open and the words `` yay '' written on it . ALT: a cartoon of a pikachu with its mouth open and the words `` yay '' written on it .

After a long and quite traumatic train journey, have just arrived in #Strasbourg for the #ESCAP conference. Looking forward to some interesting talks #child and on #youth #mentalhealth, catching up with colleagues and some great French food and wine in a stunning location

Excited to announce that I have been appointed to Principal Research Fellow within @ucl-sbb.bsky.social. It’s an honor to work at such a great university with wonderful colleagues and a fantastic team. Very much looking forward to all the new social prescribing work we have planned.

Anyway I look forward to hearing about your further work on this over the coming months. Respectfully. Dan

I wouldn’t wasn’t to overly speculate if they were or not, but some may fall outside this benchmark as some of the assessment criteria are outside of the deign and researchers control.

I probably would urge a little caution on the subsequent ‘high quality’ studies point post review, we didn’t quality assess them as they weren’t included and the bar was very high/cautious...

Hi Lucy, thanks for your comments and was really interesting hearing the debate this morning. I agree it is a shame to not have included some of the more recent research, but unfortunately the nature of reviews are they are always have a cut off and need time to be reviewed and published 🧵

@jess-deighton.bsky.social @neilhumphrey.bsky.social @corc-annafreud.bsky.social @umartoseeb.bsky.social @emredeniz.bsky.social @jgas.bsky.social @emmaashworth.bsky.social @pravpatalay.bsky.social @ucl-sbb.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk

This suggests we should pay careful attention to what is being implemented.

Additionally, it’s also important to remember the impact of these interventions alone is often small, and should be part of a wider, whole-school approach to mental health and wellbeing.

Not all interventions are equal. Our analysis found that CBT-informed sessions, where young people learn to understand their thoughts and behaviours, as well as how to manage them, were significantly more effective at reducing anxiety symptoms than mindfulness-based classes…

As such….

Our findings, based on the most up-to-date evidence, show that whole-class sessions can work in reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety. Although the effect is small on average for individuals, such small effects can be impactful once scaled up at a population level.

Importantly…

Frontiers | Universal, school-based, interventions to improve emotional outcomes in children and young people: a systematic review and meta-analysis IntroductionThere is debate into the impact of universal, school-based interventions to improve emotional outcomes. Previous reviews have only focused on anx...

🚨 Paper alert 🚨 There’s a lot of debate at the moment around universal, interventions in schools. A thread 🧵

Our new meta-analysis, published today, shows they can work in reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety.

www.frontiersin.org/journals/chi...

Findings discussed more below…

Developing Collaborative Relationships between Professionals and Parents of Children with Neurodisability: A Meta-Narrative Review - Current Developmental Disorders Reports Purpose of Review Parents of children with complex neurodisabilities have multiple encounters with healthcare and disability professionals. Many parents view these encounters as unsatisfactory, citing...

New paper out led by my fab PhD student @sarahhayward25 on collaborative relationships between #professionals and #parents of young people with #neurodisabilities

doi.org/10.1007/s404...

It’s great to see this finally out - our viewpoint and learning from implementing #socialprescribing in the #US

@ucl-sbb.bsky.social @neilhumphrey.bsky.social @marctibber.bsky.social @lousticp.bsky.social

INcreasing Adolescent social and Community supporT (INACT): Pilot study protocol Background Social prescribing is a mechanism for connecting patients with non-medical forms of support within the community and has been shown to improve loneliness. Yet uptake from young people (YP)...

Can #socialprescribing be implemented in #schools for #pupils or who #lonely?

We are testing this across 12 schools nationally, testing its feasibility, acceptability and suitability (and are looking for more schools for next stage)

Protocol paper: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

What is the impact of youth sector proviso n on mental health? Check out our latest report commissioned by NCST

tinyurl.com/uhxmuu32

@ucl-sbb.bsky.social

Very excited to be developin best practice guidelines for #child and #youth #socialprescribing as part of this work

A blue square features the Social Prescribing Day logo, alongside a large number 7, indicating there are only seven days to go. Scattered around the image edges are colourful illustrations of trees and people enjoying all kinds of activities such as painting, running and playing music. The hashtag #SocialPrescribingDay appears at the bottom.

Only one week until #SocialPrescribingDay! 📅

We'll be taking the opportunity to share some exciting updates 👀

Keep an eye on our socials & join the Social Prescribing Youth Network mailing list to be the first to know: sbbresearch.org/spyn/

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

We are looking for a #researchfellow / #trialmanager to come and work with us at @ucl-sbb.bsky.social on 2 exciting #socialprescribing #trials in #CAMHS and #schools

Link for further information here: shorturl.at/RFcdv

@ucliehc.bsky.social

Really great work - looking forward to read in more detail

Over the moon that I have been selected as one of the recipients for a @medresfdn.bsky.social launchpad grant - where I will be testing #socialprescribing as part of #CAMHS treatment to help take a holistic approach to be tackling #youthmentalhealth @ucl-sbb.bsky.social

New resource alert!

Teaching #SocialPrescribing: An Educator’s Guide, based on my course “Social Prescribing in the City"

Available here: bit.ly/3VFnz3O

Hello Bluesky 👋

We’re the Social Biobehavioural Research Group, a WHO Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health at UCL.

We investigate how social connections & behaviours impact people’s health by conducting cutting-edge, cross disciplinary research.

Learn more about us 👇
sbbresearch.org