Research events

2019’s meeting focused on ‘Transforming mental health throughout the life course’, with symposia looking at loneliness, the intersection of physical and mental health, tracking mental health trajectories, and suicide and self-harm.

You can find the full agenda here, read the live blog of the entire 2-day meeting here, watch the live-stream of the panel discussion here, and find the speaker’s presentations below: 

• Keynote 1: Sonia Johnson, University College London – “Should we prioritise social and self-management interventions in efforts to improve mental health outcomes through research?”

• Symposium 1: “Loneliness and mental health: a two-way relationship?”
  • Pamela Qualter, University of Manchester – “Children’s Experiences of Loneliness”
  • Luc Goossens, KU Leuven – “Loneliness in Adolescence”
  • Timothy Matthews, King’s College London – “Lonely young adults in modern Britain: Findings from an epidemiological cohort study”
  • Jude Stansfield, Public Health England – “A Public Mental Health approach to loneliness” 

• Symposium 2: “Tracking the life-long effects of mental illness”
  • Bill Fulford, University of Oxford – “Montgomery and mental health: shared decision-making based on evidence and values”
  • Rogier Kievit, University of Cambridge – “It’s about time: Understanding how mental health changes”
  • Jessica Agnew-Blais, King’s College London – “Understanding the course of ADHD across the lifespan: the importance of longitudinal cohorts”
  • Philip Shaw, National Institutes of Health (NIH) – “Understanding the different adult outcomes of childhood ADHD”

• Keynote 2: Michael Ungar, Dalhousie University – “Diagnosing resilience: A multisystemic model for positive development in stressed environments”

• Symposium 3: “Mind and matter: intersections of physical and mental health”
  • Andrew Steptoe, University College London – “Mental health and the heart: how depression and anxiety influence, and are influenced by, heart disease”
  • Bridget Callaghan, Columbia University – “Brain, Mind, Body: How our early environments shape brain-gut communication across development”
  • Clare Llewellyn, University College London – “Obesity: a matter of the mind, body and behaviour”
  • Simon Gilbody, University of York – “Smoke free mental health services: from rhetoric to reality” 

• Keynote 3: Joshua Gordon, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) – “NIMH priorities and progress” 

• Symposium 4: “Tackling suicide and self-harm”
  • Rory O’Connor, University of Glasgow – “Psychological Processes and Suicidal Behaviour”
  • Becky Mars, Bristol University – “Transitions from suicidal thoughts to attempts”
  • Ellen Townsend, University of Nottingham – “The Card Sort Task for Self-Harm: An innovative method for investigating the complexity and temporal dynamics of self-harm”
  • Reinhard Lindner, University of Kassel – “Multimorbidity and the wish for assisted suicide”

• Rapid-fire talks
  • Shana Silverstein, National Institute of Mental Health & University College London – “Observational fear learning: from mouse to man”
  • Hjördis Lorenz, University of Oxford – “Let the CAT out of the bag: A new measure to assess concrete and abstract thinking (CAT)”
  • Joshua Buckman, University College London – “The Stratified Medicine Approaches for Treatment Selection (SMART) Mental Health Prediction Tournament”
  • Alexandra Schmidt, University of Sussex – “Physical activity and depression: Do the beneficial effects extend to individuals with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)?”
  • Radhika Kandaswamy, King’s College London – “DNA methylome marks of exposure to psychosocial stress during adolescence: Analysis of a novel longitudinal MZ discordant twin study”
  • Sophie Li, University of New South Wales – “Are women’s catastrophic beliefs ovary-actions? Progesterone levels predict reductions in phobic avoidance following cognitive restructuring in women with spider phobia.”

Over 200 mental health researchers, clinicians, funders and members of the public affected by mental illness joined us for 2 days to explore cutting-edge ways to understand, treat and prevent mental illness under the theme of ‘Towards Prevention and Early Intervention’. You can find the full agenda here, and read the live blog of highlights and summaries from the whole meeting here.

This year’s meeting focused on the emergence of mental illness, with our expert speakers discussing everything from how anxiety disorders affect the way the brain works to the impact of bullying on mental health. You can see the full agenda here, or read the live blog of the entire meeting or our summary.

This meeting focused on major challenges in mental health, covering everything from childhood mental health to the inner workings of the brain. Researchers and policy makers also discussed a range of conditions, from depression to schizophrenia. You can find a summary of the meeting here.

This meeting brought together researchers and innovators to explore how data science can transform how we understand, treat and prevent mental illness. Participants discussed how we can use all types of data such as health and administrative data, naturalistic data (eg information collected from social media and wearable devices), as well as large research datasets and cutting edge analytical tools, to transform mental health. You can view the full agenda here, and see our summary of learnings from the meeting here.