We are delighted to announce our 2024 Annual Debate:
How Can Sociology Engage with the Major Challenges of our Time?
As wars rage and the climate crisis looms, what can sociology offer? Four eminent sociologists will tackle this question tinyurl.com/5n7cxbs9 Katherine Twamley

We are recruiting the final few participants for this online study evaluating a new 3 session therapy to address intrusive and distressing thoughts and images after #suicide #bereavement . This represents a collaboration between UCL Psych & Lang Sci UCL Psychiatry Imperial Psychiatry Support After Suicide Partnership

Thank you for sharing! Very proud of this work.

Please note that due to the lack of gender data, we weren’t able to include trans people in this analysis

@BronwyneCoetzee, @SuzanneHuman and I, who were doing Wellcome funded work in South Africa, explored the experiences of YP there bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pa… with some similarities but also differences in experience

My final thought - we need to learn the lessons we can and on future, if we are faced with a need to contain such a threat again, keep schools open as a priority and #playfirst Prof Sam Cartwright-Hatton. & even now, continue to prioritise overcoming loneliness AND improve access to mh help

(4) loneliness did decrease on return to school but problems continue and some have struggled to return to school and re engage socially.

(3) keeping in touch digitally helped a bit but is not the same as face to face

(2) loneliness increased e.g. we can see this from OxWell Study data from 2020 thanks Mina Fazel Emma Soneson Galit.Geulayov who found more than 1/3 felt more lonely during lockdown pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36124048/

Now, looking back, more studies including sys reviews have showed (1) mh problems increased for many cyp - trend was there pre pandemic but has continued and is concerning

And using cospace study data thanks Cathy Creswell 💙 Polly Waite 💙 , we also examined loneliness in cyp in uk in early stages of pandemic finding that young people who were more lonely also had more mh symptoms sciencedirect.com/science/articl… thanks Eoin McElroy Dr Bettina Moltrecht on this one!

Then we published specifically on papers from young people with pre existing mh problems - in same pattern bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bj… BPS Journals Dr Emily Hards led this one

Essentially, what we found was little was known re pandemic context specifically about cyp from general population, but many papers showing cross sectional and also some longitudinal- loneliness is linked to mental health problems esp. depression, also anxiety

Back then, we Nina Higson-Sweeney Shirley Reynolds Roz Dr Eleanor Chatburn et al rapidly reviewed the literature to see what was already known about how social isolation and loneliness impact mh in cyp - published v quickly thanks to JAACAP jaacap.org/article/S0890-…

Today is 4 years since the first covid lockdown in 🇬🇧. Amongst many other things (incl. 🧻 supply), we were concerned about how social isolation &loneliness would impact mental health in YP specifically. What did we do then and what has been found now? A 🧵

Open Access UCL Research: The role of loneliness in the association between sexual orientation and depressive symptoms among older adults: A prospective cohort study discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1019…