The Mental Elf

Prof Grainne McAlonan, Professor of Translational Neuroscience in the Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences at King's College London.Synopsis: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is clinically diverse, and its etiological mechanisms are poorly understood. To inform prognosis and generate intervention opportunities we need a better understanding of causal pathways; and subsequently, a means to examine target engagement. There is fresh hope however, based on evidence that multiple risk factors for ASD and related neurodevelopmental conditions converge to disrupt the balance between excitatory glutamate (E) and inhibitory GABA (I). This will likely alter the activity and structure of brain circuits which underpin (especially social) cognition and behaviour. Professor McAlonon’s research is directly testing this hypothesis by using MRI to examine spontaneous functional activity and microstructure in the brain of neonates with and without vulnerabilities for neurodevelopmental disorders. Her research has also begun to investigate whether E/I differences persist into adulthood in ASD, and if they are ‘responsive’ to pharmacological modulation. In her keynote talk, Professor McAlonan will share some of her early progress in these areas. Biography: Professor Grainne McAlonan studied Medicine at University of Cambridge and Imperial College London and completed a PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience at University of Cambridge.  After clinical and research posts in the UK, she worked for over a decade in The University of Hong Kong before returning to the IoPPN. She uses MRI as a translational tool to link brain and behaviour in people with neurodevelopmental conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); and to ‘back’ (and ‘forward’) translate to laboratory models. Her current research is informed by her work in the National ADHD and Autism Service for Adults at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) and she is Clinical Disorders Cluster Lead for the NIHR-Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. Professor McAlonan is a group leader within the MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders at IoPPN and is a lead investigator within the EU-AIMS-2-TRIALS consortium – a European network hosting the world’s largest grant for autism research. She is responsible for fetal/neonatal/infant brain imaging studies of children vulnerable to neurodevelopmental conditions and for pharmacology studies in adults with ASD.

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Professor Terrie E. Moffitt, Professor of Social Development in the Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King's College London.Synopsis: Repeated mental-health assessments in a birth cohort followed to age 45 reveal that mental disorder eventually affects virtually everyone. The predominant pattern among clinically significant cases is adolescent onset followed by a succession of different diagnoses emerging over decades. Findings challenge our field’s over-reliance on researching and treating specific mental disorders diagnosed in cross-sectional snapshots.Bio: Terrie E. Moffitt’s expertise is in the areas of lifelong aging, mental health, longitudinal research methods, developmental theory, neuropsychology, and gene-environment interplay. She is the associate director of the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, which follows a 1972 birth cohort in New Zealand. She also founded the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study (E-Risk), which follows a 1994 birth cohort in the UK. Dr. Moffitt is a licensed clinical psychologist, with specialization in neuropsychological assessment. Her service includes as a trustee of the Nuffield Foundation (UK), chair of the Board on Board on Behavioral, Cognitive and Sensory Sciences at the National Academies of Sciences, member of the National Advisory Council on Aging (US-NIH), and chair of the jury for the Klaus J. Jacobs Prize (Switzerland). She is an elected fellow of the US National Academy of Medicine, British Academy, UK Academy of Medical Sciences, Academia Europa, Association of Psychological Science, and the American Society of Criminology. Dr. Moffitt enjoys working on her poison-ivy farm in North Carolina. Learn more at www.moffittcaspi.com.

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#ImpactFrameworks conference organisers Mark Taylor, Jess Romo and Shaun Leamon discuss the conference highlights over the two days and lessons learnt.

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Dr Jenny Donovan, CEO of the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) Presentation Title: Evidence for ChangeThe Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) was established to advance an evidence-based education system. What does that mean for educators and teachers? Presumably, it implies that there needs to be some sort of change: some adjustments to practice and some shift towards greater utilisation and implementation of evidence at scale. But teachers are weary of top-down edicts that impose change without reason or support, and they are - rightly so - sceptical of the fads and grifters that come and go. So what can AERO do to effectively support changes in educators' and teachers' practices? How can it advance the generation, implementation, and use of evidence? In this talk, the inaugural CEO of AERO, Dr Jenny Donovan, will share insights about how AERO seeks to advance evidence -informed teaching practices by leveraging and enabling necessary conditions for change, as well as by supporting change at every step of the process from evidence uptake, to understanding, to implementation.

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Yara Toenders and Dr Lianne Schmaal from Orygen in Melbourne, Australia, talk about their Wellcome Trust Active Ingredients project on inflammation and depression in young people.

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Welcome to this podcast on suicide means restriction, brought to you by the Cochrane Common Mental Disorders group and the Mental Elf.*TRIGGER WARNING*This podcast is aimed at mental health researchers and policy makers. In it we discuss the ways that we can prevent suicide, restricting the means of people taking their own lives, and methods of suicide. Please do not listen to this discussion if you are feeling unsafe. Prof Ann JohnProfessor in Public Health and Psychiatry at the Swansea University Medical SchoolCo-Director of the Cochrane Common Mental Disorders Satellite Dr Lisa MarzanoAssociate Professor in Psychology at Middlesex UniversityDr Dee KnipeVC EBI Research Fellow at the University of BristolIn the podcast, we will define what we mean by this difficult term: suicide means restriction, we'll present what we know works in this field, where the gaps are in our knowledge, and what the priorities are for future research. We will also discuss about why it's so difficult to talk about suicide and explore how can we have safe and constructive conversations about suicide means restriction that involve all of the right people.

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Presentation Title: The Promise and Pitfalls of Co-creation In this talk, Ruth Levine, CEO of IDInsight, will highlight the ways in which sustained evidence uptake depends on openness to co-creation of research and evaluation questions and methods with members of the policy community, as well as with civil society. She will discuss the importance of breaking barriers to collaboration to ensure relevance of research findings. She will also note the risks and how they can be mitigated. Ruth Levine, PhD, is Chief Executive Officer of IDinsight, a global advisory, data analytics, and research organization. Dr. Levine, a development economist and expert in international development, global health and education, was a policy fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford University between 2019-2020. Between 2011-2019, she served as the director of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's Global Development and Population Team.The 2021 Evidence and Implementation Summit is taking place online on 30-31 March 2021. Find out more at: www.eisummit.org/

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Professor Andrew McIntosh from the University of Edinburgh, Professor Ann John from Swansea University, Professor Dermot O'Reilly from Queen's University Belfast and Professor Robert Stewart from King's College London, talk about mental health data science in this podcast recorded shortly after the MQ Data Science meeting in December 2020.

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Dr Rinad Beidas, University of PennsylvaniaPresentation Title: Harnessing implementation science to realize the promise of evidence based practice in mental health care.Implementation science, or the study of methods to improve the adoption, implementation, and sustainment of evidence-based practices, has grown exponentially in the past decade in response to growing concerns about the research to practice chasm. Implementation researchers have developed a set of frameworks, measures, and outcomes to guide empirical inquiry and practical implementation. In this talk, I will share an overview of my implementation research program in pediatric mental health with an eye towards grounding the findings within the broader field. I will describe how my research has evolved from understanding the determinants of implementation (e.g., knowledge, attitudes, organizational culture) to testing the comparative effectiveness of strategies to change clinician behavior with a focus on targets and mechanisms. I will describe the community-partnered empirical work that I have conducted within the natural laboratory of a system-wide initiative supporting cognitive-behavioral therapy in the City of Philadelphia. I will conclude with future areas of emphasis for the field of implementation science in order to achieve the promise of evidence-based practice for youth and families served by public mental health systems. Dr Beidas is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the Founder and Director of the Penn Implementation Science Center at the Leonard Davis Institute (PISCE@LDI). Her work has helped to advance the systematic uptake of evidence-based practices in everyday clinical and service delivery, improving the quality and effectiveness of health and mental health services.The 2021 Evidence and Implementation Summit is taking place online on 30-31 March 2021. Find out more at: https://www.eisummit.org/

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How can understanding and technologies from the basic biosciences contribute to the wider field of mental health research? What cross-disciplinary interface areas involving biosciences open up areas for innovative translational research? And what are some of the barriers and enablers to working across disciplines involving the basic biosciences? In this #MentalHealthResearchMatters podcast Dr Sadhana Sharma (Strategy and Policy Manager) and Dr Iain Templeman (Senior Portfolio Manager) at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) discuss these questions and outline how the BBSRC’s portfolio and strategy fits in with the wider landscape of mental health research.https://bbsrc.ukri.org/research/science-remit/

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