The Mental Elf

19/12/2025

Unlock the potential of school-based mental health support! ReSET Webinar

Discover insights and practical tips from a new preventative school-based mental health programme

🗓️ When? Wednesday 21st January
🕞 Time: 3.30-4.45pm
🗣️ Speakers: Professor Essi Viding, Professor Pasco Fearon, Dr Dr Alex Lloyd
🌳 Hosted by The Mental Elf - André Tomlin

We invite school staff and mental health practitioners to join the UCL ReSET Project team for a webinar exploring insights and practical tips from ReSET, a new preventative, group-based mental health intervention for adolescents delivered in school settings.

🎟️ Get your FREE ticket NOW!

Discover insights and practical tips from a new preventative school-based mental health programme

18/12/2025

What does 😎 GOOD and 😨 BAD mental health communication look like online?

We're having a webinar to discuss this with young people, social media influencers and scientists. It'll be fascinating and fun. Why not come along and learn!?

🎟️ Tickets are FREE but get yours FAST to avoid disappointment!

Speakers include:
🌟 Eva Asiedu-Addo from The McPin Foundation
🌟 Kadra Abdinasir from Centre for Mental Health
🌟 Dr Ahmed Ezzat from Health Media Consultancy
🌟 Kaz ChuFoon from FlippGen
🌟 Ruth Page from the University of Birmingham
🌟 Michael Larkin from Aston University

Join our event and hear youth-led insights on what good and bad mental health communication looks like online.

18/12/2025

Mental health conditions 'run in families', but what does this actually mean for your risk? 🧬

This Danish study of 3 million people reveals a crucial distinction between relative and absolute risk.

For depression:
📊 2.35-times increased risk with affected first-degree relative
📊 But this means 15% lifetime risk vs 7.8% in general population
📊 Even with an affected parent, 85% chance you won't develop depression

Key finding: 60% of depression cases occurred in people with no affected close relatives.

What this means: Family history can guide early support, but environmental stressors, trauma, and life experiences all play major roles. Absence of family history doesn't mean low risk.

Read the full blog: https://buff.ly/u6BpgpR

17/12/2025

Healthcare workers have more than twice the risk of fatal drug overdose as people working outside healthcare 💊

This study analysed 58 coroner reports to understand why. The findings revealed a troubling intersection of occupational hazards and declining mental health.

Occupational hazards:
💊 64% sourced drugs from their workplace
💉 55% used clinical knowledge to administer drugs with medical equipment
📋 28% obtained private prescriptions from less-regulated sources

Mental health factors:
😔 50% had a mental health condition
📈 48% had recent deterioration in mental health, often due to excessive overtime, patient trauma, and professional pressures
💊 14% were self-medicating for chronic pain

The study included mostly doctors (48%, including 9 anaesthetists and 5 GPs). Deaths were categorised as su***de in 48% of cases, accidental in 41%, and undetermined in 10%.

Why this matters:
Substance use disorder among healthcare workers is not a personal failure but systemically embedded within the profession. Healthcare institutions need to create non-stigmatising workplace cultures and provide accessible mental health and addiction services.

Read the full blog: https://buff.ly/VpK7Fps

16/12/2025

Why do some people develop psychiatric disorders while others do not? Despite decades of research, this question remains difficult to answer.

Researchers created PsyRiskMR, a new database to identify biological risk factors for 10 common psychiatric disorders using genetic data.

What they found:
🧬 16 risk traits linked to disorders (like extraversion and neuroticism)
🧠 7 brain imaging features associated with mental health
🔬 Hundreds of genes causally linked to conditions

Many risk factors were associated with multiple disorders, showing how complex mental health risk really is.

Why this matters:
Having genetic data in one accessible place speeds up research. If future studies prove certain risk factors directly cause disorders, this could lead to new treatments and prevention efforts.

Important note: The database focuses on European ancestry data and clinical applications remain distant, but it's a valuable research tool.

Read the full blog: https://buff.ly/2PBNELC

12/12/2025

Does teenage body dissatisfaction cause eating disorders and depression, or do they just tend to occur together? 🤔

This clever twin study tracked nearly 14,000 UK adolescents from age 16 into their twenties to find out. The answer matters enormously for prevention efforts.

What they found:
📊 Teenagers with higher body dissatisfaction at 16 experienced more eating disorder symptoms at 21 and higher rates of depression at both 21 and 26
🧬 By comparing twins to each other (especially identical twins who share all their genes), researchers could rule out many hidden factors
✅ Even when comparing identical twins, the link between body dissatisfaction and depression remained strong, providing evidence for causation
✅ The connection to eating disorder symptoms weakened but persisted, suggesting body dissatisfaction itself contributes to these problems
🧬 Genetics played a substantial role: 77% of the overlap between body dissatisfaction and eating disorders was due to genetic factors, as was 66-78% for depression

But genetics weren't the whole story. Body dissatisfaction itself appears to drive mental health problems.

Why this matters:
If body dissatisfaction directly triggers eating disorders and depression, then prevention programs should prioritise helping teenagers develop healthier body image. Schools may be ideal places to deliver these interventions at scale, before severe symptoms develop.

Given the high costs (financial and human) of treating eating disorders and depression, improved prevention and management of body dissatisfaction should be a public health priority.

Read the full blog: https://buff.ly/53vUiWJ

11/12/2025

If you've recovered from depression while taking antidepressants, you might be wondering: how do I stop safely? 💊

This major network meta-analysis OUT TODAY synthesised 76 randomised controlled trials involving 17,379 participants to compare different strategies for stopping antidepressants.

What they found:
✅ Slow tapering (>4 weeks) + psychological support was most effective at preventing relapse
✅ This approach worked almost as well as continuing medication
❌ Abrupt discontinuation substantially increased relapse risk
❌ Fast tapering (≤4 weeks) also increased relapse risk and should be avoided
💚 Psychological support (like CBT or mindfulness) enhanced the benefits of slow tapering

Interestingly, psychological support only helped when combined with slow tapering. It didn't improve outcomes for people who continued medication or stopped abruptly.

What this means for you:
If you're thinking about stopping antidepressants, don't do it suddenly or too quickly. Work with your GP to create a personalised tapering plan that gradually reduces your dose over at least a month. If you're worried about relapse, ask about psychological support during the tapering process.

These findings align with NICE guidelines and reinforce the importance of collaborative, tailored approaches to deprescribing antidepressants.

Read the full blog: https://buff.ly/ixS2uZA

This network meta-analysis of 76 trials found that slow tapering (over 4 weeks) combined with psychological support was most effective for preventing relapse when stopping antidepressants. Abrupt discontinuation and fast tapering substantially increased relapse risk and should be avoided.

10/12/2025

After a flu shot, do you actually feel sick, or is it just in your head? 💉

This randomised controlled trial tested whether the flu vaccine triggers sickness behaviour. The results might surprise you.

The study gave 52 people an influenza vaccine and 50 people a saline injection (placebo), then measured inflammatory markers and how they felt 24 hours later.

What they found:
✅ The vaccine definitely raised cytokine levels (inflammation markers)
❌ But vaccinated participants didn't feel substantially different from the placebo group
💪 Only muscle aches were higher in the vaccine group
🌡️ People with stronger inflammatory responses did report feeling more tired and warmer

What this tells us:

The "dose" of inflammation matters. Subtle immune activation from vaccines may not be enough to trigger obvious sickness behaviour in most people. Stronger immune challenges (like bacterial endotoxin) produce more noticeable effects.

This matters for mental health research. Although vaccine-induced inflammation is adaptive and short-term (helping us build protection), chronic inflammation can be maladaptive and contributes to conditions like depression and schizophrenia.

Vaccine models can help researchers study how subtle inflammation affects mood and behaviour, improving our understanding of inflammation-related mental health conditions.

Read the full blog: https://buff.ly/k3V3v1s

09/12/2025

"I thought I had been kidnapped. It was scary, confusing and lonely. It's like a journey into the unknown." 😢

This is how one person described being sectioned under the Mental Health Act, taken to hospital in a black van by people not wearing uniforms.

The Co-Pact PhotoVoice study asked 48 people from racially minoritised communities to share photos and stories of their detention experiences. What they revealed is both powerful and deeply troubling 📸

In this study, participants described:
✋🏾 Coercive care and institutional racism
🚨 Being treated like criminals with police involvement
🏥 Admissions hours away from their communities
😶 Staff who were hostile, rude, and sometimes openly racist
🔇 Feeling "voiceless" and discredited

But they also told us what could prevent crisis admissions: better access to crisis services, culturally sensitive care, advocacy, trauma-informed approaches, and recognition of their life experiences 🌳🌤️🍄

These stories and images are difficult to ignore. They must inform how we redesign mental health services.

Read the full blog: https://buff.ly/AhjXQr8

05/12/2025

Inside the urge: what’s the role of bodily sensations in skin-picking disorder? 🤔
A new systematic review brings together early evidence on interoception, affective touch, and the emotional processes that may shape skin-picking urges.

The evidence base is still small, but it opens up important questions for clinicians, researchers, and anyone living with BFRBs.

Read the full blog here 👇
https://buff.ly/4F0QoAa

03/12/2025

⏳ Healing takes time.
A major new UK trial (DECRYPT) tested whether cognitive therapy for PTSD (CT-PTSD) can support young people in CAMHS who’ve experienced multiple traumatic events.

CT-PTSD delivered clearer, stronger improvements by 11 months, especially across PTSD, anxiety and emotional regulation.

Read the summary 👇
https://buff.ly/KPb4rxg

02/12/2025

⚠️ What impact are social media influencers having on youth mental health?
⚠️ Why do young people describe some online mental health content as “dangerous”?
⚠️ What do they actually want from adults communicating in digital spaces?

We're hosting a youth-led webinar for Ruth Page and colleagues; exploring influencer culture, online pressure, and the difference between good and harmful mental health communication. It’s especially relevant for mental health professionals, researchers and policy-makers, but everyone is welcome!

Speakers include: Eva Asiedu-Addo from The McPin Foundation, Kadra Abdinasir from Centre for Mental Health, Dr Ahmed Ezzat, Founder of Health Media Consultancy, and Professor Ruth Page, Lead researcher on the Influencer Stories of Mental Health and Young People project at the University of Birmingham. Our chair will be: Professor Michael Larkin from Aston University.

Sign up here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wtf-this-is-so-dangerous-social-media-influencers-youth-mental-health-tickets-1975961081787?aff=oddtdtcreator

Please share with your networks 🙏🏽

Join our event and hear youth-led insights on what good and bad mental health communication looks like online.