Child and adolescent mental health

I have a number of research interests in the provision of mental health services for children and young people.

First, I am working with collaborators from the Universities of Dundee, Edinburgh, and Stirling and from Public Health Scotland to develop methodologies to allow us to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the mental health needs of children and young people in Scotland, with a focus on marginalised and vulnerable groups. This is important as designing and delivering mental health services requires us to understand the needs they must meet.

My collaborators and I have recently conducted an audit of referrals to Tayside CAMHS that mention suicidality. We wanted to learn whether we were failing to meet the needs of suicidal young people, and our findings allowed us to generate a series of recommendations for Scottish policy makers and CAMHS. We have recently submitted this work for publication.

I am also interested in the ways in which the assessment of neurodevelopmental divergence benefits from being trauma-informed, and the overlap between neurodevelopment and trauma.