Fellowship Application Day 2025 run online by @nihr-rss.bsky.social on 17 Sept - a REALLY important opportunity for anyone wanting to go for an NIHR Doctoral or Postdoctoral Award... and *free!* Not to be missed! 😀

mentalhealthresearch.org.uk/rss-fellowsh...

Deadline for this funded PhD to work with me and @duncanastle.bsky.social is soon! 26 July.

The student must be a woman (because it’s based at Newnham College) and eligible for UK home fees.

My book Coming Of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us is out in paperback now

www.penguin.co.uk/books/451093...

Funded PhD opportunity with @sjblakemore.bsky.social and I, at Cambridge. We are looking for someone interested in developmental science, to start in the coming academic year. Please share it with anyone you think might be interested (see details attached 😁).
drive.google.com/file/d/1RIvg...

Are adolescents sensitive about sensitive data?

In our new @oxwell.bsky.social publication, we explore students' concerns about taking part in research including sensitive topics such as mental health & maltreatment.

Headlines below, w/ substantial implications for research design & analysis ⬇️

I am hiring for a new researchers on my @nuffieldfoundation.org young carers project.
Closes 4thJune. After someone with strong quant longitudinal skills, passion for communicating research beyond academia & wants to work with people w lived experience/other sectors
jobs.sgul.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

We’re hiring 1–4 researchers for ERC-funded projects on #bullying, #PeerRelations & #MentalHealth

💡 DWELL, (PI @sarahtmalamut.bsky.social) &
💡 SHADES (PI @tiinaturu.bsky.social )

🗓 Apply by 5 May 4 pm (Finnish time)
🔗 ats.talentadore.com/apply/erikoi...

#OpenVacancies #AcademicJobs #Psychology

The second paper of my PhD is now out in the world! It is a longitudinal study exploring if intolerance of uncertainty predicts generalised anxiety. Thanks to
@profhelendodd.bsky.social, @jmorriss.bsky.social, @hollyrayson.bsky.social for all your support doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2025.103004

Join our team at an exciting point for the
@resetproject.bsky.social as we disseminate the findings from our school-based, preventative mental health intervention for adolescents!

🚨 HIRING 🚨 a Postdoctoal Associate in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience @kingsioppn.bsky.social. My group's research aims to understand how social and physical environments impact brain and behaviour development.

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DLX655/p...

Accepting applications until the 15th of March!

Important new evidence published today: large-scale DofE trial (N=12,166) found that two universal MH awareness interventions, in secondary schools, led to an *increase* in emotional symptoms at long term (9-12 month) follow up

tinyurl.com/4ffday8y

Thread below

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We talk a lot about why adolescent girls report more low mood and anxiety, and why this might be getting worse.

But what do girls themselves think might explain this? As you might have guessed, we don’t really know.

So, we asked them: doi.org/10.1186/s129...

1/8

First post on Bluesky! Here @rvisontay.bsky.social and I present the case for cancer warning labels on alcoholic drinks in Australia:

theconversation.com/should-austr...

New paper! Adolescents more susceptible to anti-social influence on an experimental task reported lower compliance with future COVID social distancing rules. Prosociality also predicted future compliance, but less clear associations for other factors. OA Link: doi.org/10.1016/j.he...

How do you change the behaviour of the world?

Psychology found its way into Covid policy in several ways. But did it work? @jackandrews.bsky.social looked at the research…

www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...

*Networks of care for the modern adolescent* 🫶🌻

In our new paper, we combine a #network approach + applied research lens to explore where #youngpeople are accessing #mentalhealth support & how helpful they find it.

w/ Simon R White & @minafazeloxford.bsky.social

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Signed! Could not imagine a better place to do a PhD than the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.

Great to see this paper out led by the brilliant @drjillhalladay.bsky.social (see 🧵 below):

⭐️ Emotional problems predicted later alcohol use more-so than the reverse in adolescence

⭐ Depression-focused measures yielded more consistent associations with alcohol use than anxiety-focused measures

These findings made me think of the importance of prosocial behaviour in peer led interventions for mental health. They often find better outcomes for those who are delivering the interventions, than those receiving them.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Fascinating study showing that people randomised to a self-kindness condition ended up reporting worse m/health. Those tasked with caring for others ended up with better m/h.

'These findings [...] suggest that self-kindness might not be as positive as it feels.'

psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

Interested in mental health/young people's mental health? We have got post doc jobs out to advert now! www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy... - this is part of the NIHR award to Bath, and the post doc opportunities are very exciting. Working potentially across work packages and getting training too!

In other words, we are better at recalling who likes us/each other when presented with self-relevant social networks, but who doesn't like each other when these networks have nothing to do with us.

We discuss this in relation to a need to belong, to identify social risks and to track social status

Our new study provides evidence for this hypothesis. That is, we are more accurate and faster at recalling social (e.g., friendship networks) vs. non-social network information (e.g., transport networks). We also observed a self-relevant positivity bias, but an ‘other’ negativity bias.

A lot of information in the world is relational and can be represented as a network, e.g., our friendships, or the tube map. We wanted to know if working memory has developed to better recall social vs. non-social network information. This might then help us to better navigate our social world.