The Bath Mental Health Research Group will aim to improve mental health and wellbeing in young people aged between 12 and 25 in Bath, North-East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire.

We will work with local healthcare services, schools, and social care to find new ways of helping young people improve their mental health; and put these findings into practice so young people can access help whenever, however, and wherever they need it.

Through this work, we’ll engage with people from the local community, especially those who have personal experience of going through similar difficulties. They will advise on how we plan our research, help us understand what we find, and decide how to put it into practice to best help our local area.

Research themes

Our research will cover four main themes:

• Creating and testing simple and widely available support for common mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. This includes using digital treatments.
• Improving understanding, awareness, and treatment for mental health difficulties in young people who have conditions such as autism and ADHD.
• Understanding how many of our young people in the region have issues with smoking, drinking, and drug use, and developing new ways to help reduce the harm this may cause their mental health.
• Finding ways to help young people who have had difficult early experiences, to stop this leading to poor mental health when they get older

Group members

Our group is made up of staff from Bath's Department of Psychology, Department of Life Sciences, Department for Health, and Department of Education.

• Dr Pamela Jacobsen (Principal Investigator), Department of Psychology
• Professor Ailsa Russell, Department of Psychology
• Dr Maria Loades, Department of Psychology
• Professor Sarah Halligan, Department of Psychology
• Professor Graeme Fairchild, Department of Psychology
• Dr Kate Button, Department of Psychology
• Dr Tom Freeman, Department of Psychology
• Dr Lindsey Hines, Department of Psychology
• Dr Pete Sunderland, Department of Life Sciences
• Dr Jeff Lambert, Department for Health
• Professor James Betts, Department for Health
• Dr Ceri Brown, Department of Education
• Professor Paul Stallard, Department for Health