'Mind the Kids': an ACAMH podcast

In this episode of Mind the Kids, the podcast from the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH), host Clara Faria — academic clinical fellow in child psychiatry — is joined by Dr. Karolin Krause, clinical epidemiologist and measurement scientist at the Center for Research in Epidemiology and Statistics (CRESS), Université Paris Cité.
Dr. Krause shares findings from her recently published paper in JCPP, the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The paper — a scoping umbrella review — systematically maps 80 instruments used to measure life impact in youth mental health research across three interconnected domains: functioning, quality of life, and well-being. Despite major international core outcome set initiatives — including ICHOM and In-ROADS — consistently identifying functioning and quality of life as critical outcomes alongside symptoms, no consensus exists on which instruments to use, and the landscape remains highly fragmented.
The rationale runs deeper than methodology. Outcomes measurement in child and adolescent mental health is foundational to evidence-based, person-centred care. Symptom severity and life impact do not always move in step — the DSM-5 itself requires both symptom threshold and clinically significant impairment for diagnosis, yet instruments frequently conflate the two constructs, making it difficult to track which improves first in treatment and whether the gains that matter most to young people are being captured. Across the 80 instruments identified, the review found wide variation in informant type, length, age range, and developmental setting. More than a quarter were classified differently across reviews — a consequence of unclear construct definitions, limited co-production with young people, and what the paper terms "jingle-jangle fallacies." A notable gap emerges for the 19–24 age group navigating the transition from CAMHS to adult services, for whom no instrument has been specifically validated.
Clara and Karolin discuss why functioning and life impact deserve dedicated measurement separate from symptom scales, the case for self-report over adult-observer-dominated measures, the trade-offs of multi-informant approaches, and a Wellcome-funded project focused on the development of an evidence synthesis platform for patient-reported outcome measure selection aimed at making evidence-based instrument choice more accessible to researchers worldwide”
A must-listen for anyone working in child and adolescent mental health, CAMHS outcomes, youth mental health outcomes measurement, functioning measures, quality of life in children and young people, patient-reported outcome measures, or routine outcome measurement in research and practice.
The the JCPP paper 'Research Review: Measuring life impact of youth mental health difficulties: scoping umbrella review of 80 instruments'
Karolin R. Krause, Sophie Chung, Christiane Konstantopoulos, Terri Rodak, Ana Calderón, Nichol Edwards Snagg, Kristin Cleverley, Nancy J. Butcher, Giovanni A. Salum, Kathleen R. Merikangas, Peter Szatmari
First published: 11 March 2026
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.70134
Get a free CPD/CME certificate for listening to this podcast by registering for a FREE ACAMH Learn account at https://bit.ly/4fF4BBW
Visit https://www.acamh.org
Facebook and LinkedIn search / ACAMH
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/assoc.camh
Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/acamh.bsky.social
X https://x.com/acamh

In this episode of Mind the Kids, the podcast from the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH), host Clara Faria, academic clinical fellow in child psychiatry, is joined by Dr. Tessa Reardon, research fellow in the departments of experimental psychology and psychiatry at the University of Oxford.
Dr. Reardon shares findings from her recently published paper in JCPP, the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, co-authored with colleagues. Drawing on the My Cats cluster randomised controlled trial, the study recruited children aged four to seven identified as being at heightened risk for anxiety disorders through schools across England. The intervention — known as OSI (Online Support and Intervention for Child Anxiety) — is a parent-led, therapist-supported online cognitive behavioural therapy programme, in which parents work through digital modules of approximately 20 minutes each, supported by brief telephone or video calls with a children's wellbeing practitioner, amounting to around two and a half hours of contact time in total.
The research sits against a backdrop of a growing gap between the need for child mental health support and access to evidence-based care. CAMHS thresholds are high, and many families cannot access help until difficulties are already entrenched — yet anxiety disorders in children can onset as early as age five and a half. Schools offer a distinctive opportunity to reach families before problems escalate, and England's Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) represent a trained, scalable future workforce for delivering this type of early intervention in child mental health.
The primary outcome — anxiety disorder diagnosis at 12 months — showed fewer diagnoses in the intervention group, though the difference did not reach statistical significance. All secondary outcomes were statistically significant, however, including reductions in child anxiety symptoms, inhibited temperament, parental anxiety, and targeted child and parent behaviours. Approximately three quarters of families completed the programme — a notably strong completion rate for a school-recruited, at-risk population who were not actively help-seeking. Qualitative findings, forthcoming, point to broader ripple effects within families beyond the targeted outcomes.
Clara and Tessa discuss why schools were chosen as the recruitment setting; why the integrated practitioner calls in therapist-supported online CBT appear central to completion rates compared with fully self-guided approaches; and what the findings mean for scaling school-based mental health intervention. The conversation also turns to a key challenge ahead — addressing inequalities in participation, particularly among families from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, to ensure the benefits of parent-led CBT reach those who need them most.
A must-listen for anyone working in child anxiety prevention, early intervention, school-based mental health, CBT for young children, CAMHS, or child and adolescent mental health.
Read the JCPP paper 'Parent-led CBT delivered via online and telephone support alongside usual school practice versus usual school practice only for young children identified as at risk for anxiety disorders through screening in schools: a cluster randomised controlled trial'
Tessa Reardon, Obioha C. Ukoumunne, Helen Dodd, Gemma Halliday, Claire Hill, Bec Jasper, Benjamin Jones, Peter J. Lawrence, Fran Morgan, Anna Placzek, Ronald M. Rapee, Mara Violato, Shuye Yu, MYCATS Team, Cathy Creswell   
First published: 19 February 2026
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.70119
Get a free CPD/CME certificate for listening to this podcast by registering for a FREE ACAMH Learn account at https://bit.ly/4fF4BBW

Visit https://www.acamh.org
Facebook and LinkedIn search / ACAMH
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/assoc.camh
Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/acamh.bsky.social
X https://x.com/acamh

In this Mind the Kids podcast, we explore how early childhood vocabulary links to later educational outcomes—and why socioeconomic inequality continues to shape children’s life chances, even when ability appears similar.
Host Clara Faria is joined by Dr. Emma Thornton (University of Manchester) and Professor Danielle Matthews (University of Sheffield) to discuss their research published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, they examines whether children with the same early language skills achieve similar GCSE outcomes, and how socioeconomic circumstances influence that trajectory.
The findings challenge simple meritocratic assumptions. While stronger vocabulary at age five predicts better educational attainment overall, this relationship varies significantly across socioeconomic groups. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds have markedly lower chances of achieving key GCSE benchmarks—even with strong early language skills—while those from more advantaged backgrounds are more likely to succeed regardless of early ability.
This conversation unpacks the implications for early intervention, education policy, and equity in child development. It also highlights the need for more targeted, evidence-based support for families and schools, and a deeper understanding of the mechanisms linking early cognitive skills to long-term outcomes.
Read the JCPP paper ‘Unequal educational outcomes for children with similar early childhood vocabulary but different socioeconomic circumstances' https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.70117
Emma Thornton, Danielle Matthews, Praveetha Patalay, Colin Bannard
First published: 26 January 2026
Get a free CPD/CME certificate for listening to this podcast by registering for a FREE ACAMH Learn account at https://bit.ly/4fF4BBW
Visit https://www.acamh.org
Facebook and LinkedIn search / ACAMH
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/assoc.camh
Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/acamh.bsky.social
X https://x.com/acamh

In this episode of Mind the Kids, the podcast from the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH), host Dr. Clara Faria — academic clinical fellow in child psychiatry — is joined by Alina Marinca, PhD student in Psychological Medicine at Queen Mary University of London and clinical psychologist, whose research is funded by the London Interdisciplinary School of Science Doctoral Training Partnership.
Alina shares findings from her JCPP Advances paper  ‘Sleep disturbance as a transdiagnostic marker of children's mental health difficulties: A network analysis of item-level associations between different types of sleep problems and different behavioural and emotional symptoms'.
The study draws on data from the Development of Emotional Resilience observational cohort — a school-based sample of over 500 primary school children aged 7 to 12 from East London, one of the most ethnically diverse and economically deprived urban cohorts in UK child mental health research.
Using network analysis — a powerful statistical approach that maps relationships between symptoms simultaneously — the study examines how specific sleep problems relate to emotional difficulties (anxiety and depression) and behavioural difficulties (hyperactivity, inattention, and conduct problems) in middle childhood, moving beyond the composite sleep scores that have dominated previous research.
The headline finding is striking: sleep anxiety and general anxiety emerge as the most central, influential nodes in the network — sitting at the core of children's emotional and behavioural difficulties and functioning as a transdiagnostic mechanism across multiple mental health conditions. Emotional symptoms were found to be more tightly interwoven with sleep problems than behavioural symptoms, a developmentally meaningful finding with direct implications for how we assess and treat sleep disturbances in primary school-aged children.
Alina and Clara discuss what this means for school-based mental health intervention, why sleep should no longer be treated as a secondary or peripheral feature of child mental health, and how a modular, targeted approach focusing on sleep-related anxiety could benefit children, parents, educators, and clinicians alike. The episode closes with a preview of Alina's next research phase: a longitudinal network analysis tracking whether these core sleep and anxiety symptoms remain stable over time.
Essential listening for anyone working in child mental health, sleep research, school-based intervention, or child and adolescent psychiatry.
Read the CAMH journal paper ‘Sleep disturbance as a transdiagnostic marker of children's mental health difficulties: A network analysis of item-level associations between different types of sleep problems and different behavioural and emotional symptoms'
Alina A. Marinca, Julia E. Michalek, Alice M. Gregory, Afia Ali, Jennifer Y. F. Lau
First published: 04 March 2026 https://doi.org/10.1002/jcv2.70104
Get a free CPD/CME certificate for listening to this podcast by registering for a FREE ACAMH Learn account at https://bit.ly/4fF4BBW
Visit https://www.acamh.org
Facebook and LinkedIn search / ACAMH
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/assoc.camh
Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/acamh.bsky.social
X https://x.com/acamh

In this episode of Mind the Kids, the podcast from the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH), host Dr. Clara Faria — academic clinical fellow in child psychiatry — is joined by Professor Lauren Kenworthy, Division Chief, Neuropsychology Director, Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders Pediatric Neuropsychologist, at the Children's National Hospital, based in Washington DC.
Professor Kenworthy shares findings from her landmark study, 'Executive Function Challenges Persist into Young Adulthood and Predict Mental Health Outcomes in Autism', published in JCPP — ACAMH's flagship peer-reviewed journal. Drawing on over 300 autistic individuals and more than 900 observations spanning ages 2 to 25, this is one of the most comprehensive longitudinal investigations into executive function trajectories and mental health outcomes in autism to date.
The episode unpacks what executive functions are — the brain-based cognitive abilities governing flexibility, working memory, and impulse control — and why they matter so profoundly for the mental health of autistic young people. With approximately 70% of autistic children and 63% of autistic adults experiencing mental health challenges at any given time, Professor Kenworthy explains why understanding the relationship between executive dysfunction and depression and anxiety in autism is not just academically important, but urgent.
Among the most striking findings: executive function challenges — particularly cognitive inflexibility — remain clinically elevated from early childhood all the way through young adulthood, persisting even in young people who have had access to clinical support. Anxiety symptoms worsen significantly for autistic girls, with measurable divergence from their male peers emerging around age 12 — a finding with major implications for autism diagnosis, gender differences in autism, and targeted mental health intervention.
Professor Kenworthy also shares her work developing Unstuck and On Target, a school-based executive function intervention designed to be delivered by educators — not just clinicians — addressing the urgent need for scalable, real-world, evidence-based autism support in schools. The conversation covers participatory research, the 12-year evidence-to-implementation gap, the limits of existing interventions including ABA, and why autistic voices must be central to the future of autism research and intervention design.
Essential listening for clinicians, researchers, educators, and anyone with a stake in autism mental health, early intervention, and neurodevelopmental research.
Read the paper 'Executive function challenges persist into young adulthood and predict mental health outcomes in autism' https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.70149
Lauren Kenworthy, Lauren Baczewski, Alan H. Gerber, Cara E. Pugliese, A. Chelsea Armour, Kelsey D. Csumitta, Gabrielle E. Reimann, Caroline Candy, Gregory L. Wallace, Matthew S. Fritz
First published: 11 April 2026
Get a free CPD/CME certificate for listening to this podcast by registering for a FREE ACAMH Learn account at https://bit.ly/4fF4BBW
Visit https://www.acamh.org
Facebook and LinkedIn search / ACAMH
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/assoc.camh
Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/acamh.bsky.social
X https://x.com/acamh