'Mind the Kids': an ACAMH podcast

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How smart is a phone ban, really? With the UK's under-16s social media ban confirmed for spring 2027 and mobile phones now expected to be banned from every English school day by default, this episode of Mind the Kids tackles one of the biggest parenting and policy debates of our time: what does the evidence actually say about smartphones, social media and children's mental health?
Hosts Dr. Jane Gilmour (Honorary consultant clinical psychologist and child development programme director at UCL) and Professor Umar Toseeb (Professor of Psychology at the University of York) are joined by Professor Lisa Henderson from the University of York, author of two Child and Adolescent Mental Health Journal papers: "Digital Safeguarding Incidents in Schools With and Without Smartphone Policies" and "Innovations in Practice: A Pilot Randomised Trial on Smartphone and Social Media Abstinence."
In this episode we unpack:
– What the UK's social media ban for under-16s actually means for platforms like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat
– Why comparing the UK ban to Australia's isn't a fair like-for-like comparison
– New pilot RCT data on smartphone and social media abstinence, sleep quality and wellbeing in adolescents
– What happens to digital safeguarding incident reporting when schools introduce phone policies
– The "lost generation" risk — teens already embedded in social platforms navigating an abrupt policy shift
– Why parental phone habits predict children's smartphone use
– The "Goldilocks" amount of social media time, and why moderate use isn't the enemy
If you work in education, child psychology, safeguarding, or you're a parent trying to make sense of the smartphone ban headlines, this conversation goes well beyond the soundbites.
Mind the Kids is brought to you by ACAMH (Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health), translating the latest child and adolescent mental health research into evidence-based conversation.
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Read the JCPP paper ‘Digital safeguarding incidents in schools with and without smartphone policies: a cross-sectional study in England'
https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.70079
Emma Sullivan, Rob Dallison, Pete Montgomery, Lisa Henderson
First published: 11 March 2026
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Don't miss our webinar debate 'Regulating Social Media Use in Children and Young People – Are bans justified?' This 1.5-hour online debate brings together leading experts to examine whether age-based social media bans are an appropriate policy response to concerns about children and young people’s mental health.
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Watch the interview on ACAMH Learn at https://bit.ly/Teen-Brain-Bullied and get a free CPD/CME certificate by registering for a FREE ACAMH Learn account at https://bit.ly/4fF4BBW
In this interview, Dr. Jane Gilmour talks to Mairéad Foody, Assistant Lecturer in Psychology at University of Galway, Ireland.
Bullying is a harmful experience for many children and young people, affecting their mental health, relationships, and wellbeing into adulthood.
This talk will help listeners understand what bullying and cyberbullying are, and why they happens. It will discuss the impact of victimisation on children and adolescents and it will outline the different roles involved in bullying/cyberbullying situations (not just bullies and victims, but also bystanders and defenders).
Overall, the goal is to provide a clearer picture of how complex bullying and cyberbullying really are and why effective responses must consider individuals, peer groups, families, and schools together.
Learning Objectives
A. To understand what bullying and cyberbullying are and their prevalence.
B. To outline the impact of bullying and cyberbullying on children and adolescents.
C. To describe anti-bullying interventions.
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Please email ppls.adhdstudy@ed.ac.uk if you would like to learn more.
Why do so many young people with ADHD find it harder to bounce back from difficult emotions — and what can actually help?
This episode of the Mind the Kids podcast features Professor Aja Murray, Professor of Developmental Psychology of Mental Health at the University of Edinburgh's School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences. Aja's research examines mental health across the lifespan, with a particular focus on the links between ADHD symptoms and co-occurring mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, especially during adolescence.
Hosted by Mark Tebbs, the conversation explores the Mental Health in the Moment ADHD (MHIM-ADHD) programme of research, funded by the Medical Research Foundation, conducted with colleagues including Dejla Hoxha and Daria Melashenko at the University of Edinburgh and Amanda Russell at Northumbria University, alongside guidance from the project's young person and lived-experience advisory group.
The discussion opens by unpacking two key terms: ADHD, characterised by difficulties with attention, hyperactivity and impulsivity and diagnosed in up to around 8% of children and adolescents globally, and emotion dysregulation, the breakdown of the processes people use to identify, manage and respond to their emotions. Aja explains how emotion dysregulation, while not a core symptom of ADHD, is a commonly associated feature that can show up as intense or changeable emotions, emotions that take longer to settle, or emotionally driven behaviour such as lashing out.
Drawing on ecological momentary assessment methods that capture emotion regulation as it unfolds in daily life, alongside longitudinal data, Aja shares findings on how emotion dysregulation sits on the pathway between ADHD symptoms and elevated risk of anxiety and depression, and how patterns like rumination are a particularly important feature of this pathway. The conversation also explores rejection sensitivity dysphoria — the tendency to anxiously or angrily anticipate social rejection — a concept gaining significant attention within the ADHD community. The project's lived-experience advisory group specifically recommended including a measure of rejection sensitivity, informed by broader work on co-producing adolescent mental health research with young people (Health Expectations). Findings show rejection sensitivity dysphoria is linked to more negative emotions day to day, but that positive peer interactions can buffer this effect, pointing to peer acceptance as a promising avenue for support.
Aja also sets out practical, evidence-based strategies for adolescents with ADHD and the adults who support them, including cognitive reappraisal, techniques for interrupting rumination, acceptance, square breathing, and the "grounding" 5-4-3-2-1 technique. The conversation covers the crucial role of parents and caregivers in modelling emotion regulation, understanding how the ADHD brain processes emotion, and responding supportively rather than dismissively to emotional expression — plus a look at positive emotion regulation, including noticing, savouring and sharing good moments. Aja closes with an update on the team's emerging work on teacher relationships, autistic traits, and a co-produced digital emotion regulation app for adolescents with ADHD.
This conversation is essential listening for clinicians, researchers, educators, and parents and caregivers interested in child and adolescent mental health, ADHD, emotion regulation, and rejection sensitivity dysphoria. It offers a clear, hopeful message: emotion regulation is a skill that can be learned, practised, and strengthened over time.
Learn more about the MHIM-ADHD study protocol: 'Illuminating the daily life experiences of adolescents with and without ADHD: protocol for an ecological momentary assessment study', Aja Murray, Lydia Speyer, Melissa Thye, et al. BMJ Open, published 29 September 2023. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2023-077222
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Don't miss our webinar on 04/11/26 Led by leading expert Dr. Alessio Bellato 'Assessment Tools and Interventions for Emotion (Dys)Regulation: Practical Approaches'. Emotion regulation is a key skill for well-being, yet individuals, particularly those who are neurodivergent, may experience unique challenges in managing emotions in daily life. This two-part short course provides a practical approach to understanding, assessing, and providing personalised support across diverse populations.
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In this interview, Dr. Jane Gilmour talks to Professor Michael Kaess and Professor Dennis Ougrin, who describe self-harm as self-injury or self-poisoning, irrespective of suicidal intent, encompassing both non-suicidal self-injury and suicide attempts. 
They highlight that the lifetime prevalence of self-harm is approximately 20% among young people. They outline that initial assessment should include evaluation of risk, development of a safety plan, and a therapeutic component focused on understanding the nature of self-harm, instilling hope, and linking young people with follow-up treatment. 
They discuss evidence-based approaches to intervention, noting that Dialectical Behaviour Therapy should be offered to young people with severe self-harm. They also consider preventative approaches, including school-based interventions such as the Youth Aware of Mental Health programme, which may reduce self-harm in young people.
Learning Objectives
A. To define self-harm
B. To understand the prevalence and risk factors
C. To critically evaluate treatment evidence-base
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Can behaviour be understood without understanding the violence that surrounds it?
This episode of the Mind the Kids podcast features Susan Swingler, a researcher at the University of Oxford's Department of Social Policy and Intervention, who recently completed a PhD in social intervention and policy evaluation. Her research focuses on how young people respond to chronic stress and violence exposure in low- and middle-income country contexts, and how this shapes mental health and behavioural development through adolescence.
Hosted by Mark Tebbs, the conversation explores a landmark near two-decade longitudinal study built on data from the Thula Sana birth cohort in Khayelitsha, South Africa, conducted with colleagues Qing Han, Alexis E. Cullen, Stefani du Toit, Sarah Skeen, Jane Barlow, and Mark Tomlinson.
The discussion centres on adolescent conduct problems — persistent patterns of aggression and rule-breaking that place young people at higher risk of anti-social behaviour and poorer mental health. Susan explains why violence exposure between the ages of 12 and 14 is best understood in context rather than as an individual failing, and outlines how the study tracked adolescents from early into late adolescence using both self-report and caregiver-report measures across a community shaped by decades of structural disadvantage.
Drawing on one of the longest-running adolescent cohort studies in a high-adversity setting, Susan shares the study's central finding: violence exposure in early adolescence predicted higher conduct problems both at the time and four years later in late adolescence, even after accounting for broader socioeconomic hardship — while the reverse pathway, from conduct problems to later violence exposure, was not statistically significant. The conversation also explores exploratory sex differences in these pathways, the extraordinary effort required to retain 70% of the original cohort across 20 years, and what genuinely contextually grounded violence prevention could look like using the WHO's INSPIRE framework.
This conversation is essential listening for clinicians, researchers, educators, and policymakers interested in child and adolescent mental health, developmental psychopathology, and violence prevention in low-resource settings. It offers both rigorous longitudinal evidence and a clear message: adolescence is not too late for intervention, and understanding the context around a young person's behaviour is key to changing it.
Read the JCPP paper 'Longitudinal associations between violence exposure and adolescent conduct problems in a high-adversity, South African setting'
Susan Swingler, Qing Han, Alexis E. Cullen, Stefani du Toit, Sarah Skeen, Jane Barlow, Mark Tomlinson
First published: 11 February 2026
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.70132

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