Three quarters of all psychiatric disorders start in childhood and adolescence and a quarter of the total burden of mental ill-health in the UK is currently carried by children.
Services have limited availability and interventions often have limited effectiveness; autism spectrum disorder (ASD) alone costs the UK £27 billion annually.
The ambition of our theme in child mental health and neurodevelopmental disorders is to help reverse these statistics.
We address mental health conditions in childhood and adolescence (such as anxiety and depression), alongside neurodevelopmental conditions (such as autism and ADHD).
Our research is driving innovation in the identification, assessment and monitoring of mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions through state-of-the-art digital health technologies. We also research the (neuro)biological underpinnings to identify potential targets for treatment using child-friendly multimodal imaging and behavioural and physiological measures.
We are expanding the number of available interventions and improving how they are delivered, paving the way for treatments that are tailored to each child’s unique needs. By leveraging informatics and digital tools we are also scaling up the services offered across clinics and research programmes. Through the use of advanced mapping techniques we are improving our understanding of brain development and using this to develop more targeted and accessible treatments, for example modern non-invasive brain stimulation.
The theme will deliver its aims through the following 4 workstreams:
Workstream 1
undertakes deep phenotyping to support precision psychiatry. Utilising a range of biomarker profiling approaches supplemented with novel informatics and digital tools the workstream will focus on:
(1) identifying homogeneous subgroups of individuals with similar mechanisms underpinning symptoms;
(2) identifying predictive brain changes which predispose to, and/or worsen, and/or protect from neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) and psychiatric difficulties at given developmental stages; in order to generate new treatment targets and interventional approaches.
Workstream 2
focuses on developing novel therapeutics, extending research into neuromodulation and/or psychological interventions, including using game-based training to promote emotion regulation skills in ASD/ADHD and/or virtual reality and/or digital approaches for delivery of interventions. Longer term aims will focus on generating a portfolio of pharmacological and non-pharmacological options for NDD and mental health difficulties.
Workstream 3
focuses on whole person care to manage physical co-morbidities associated with NDD in partnership with KCH, including co-occurrence with epilepsy which shortens life in ASD; and the impact on mental health of life long physical conditions eg liver disease.
Workstream 4
utilises translational informatics and digital approaches to support deep phenotyping, identify transdiagnostic symptoms and help measure treatment response.
