Autumn Newsletter 2025 - Mental Health Research Group

Bath Mental Health Research Group Launch Event

Bath MHRG hosted a launch event on Monday 15th September. This event, held in the chancellor’s building, saw over 130 attendees from across the BANES, Swindon and Wiltshire area and beyond, including commissioners, charity representatives, health and social care professionals and academics with an interest in the youth mental health space. The event was opened by Director Pamela Jacobsen and we had a video message from Wera Hobhouse MP for Bath supporting the work of the group and each work package lead presented their work area themes including, support from lived experience partners from Bath City Farm and NeuroConnect.

Lucy Clarkson (PPIE Lead) shared the importance of engaged research and how we are working to involve young people and communities in the research. Lucy shared the difference that PPIE work has made to her. As one of two lived experience co-applicants on the grant, the other, being Ad Gridley, both of whom understand first hand the impact that mental health issues can have when experienced at a young age, and the impact this can have on later pathways and life trajectories.

Research Updates

A number of the team from Bath MHRG and the wider University of Bath Psychology department attended at EABCT Conference in Glasgow in September.EBACT Conference was attended by a Dr Tom Jenkins, Dr Atiyya Nisar, Dr Pamela Jacobsen, Prof Ailsa Russell and Lucy Clarkson.

The European Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies (EABCT) is a non-profit organisation that brings together 56 member associations and 7 affiliate associations from 43 different countries.
Dr Tom Jenkins is presented the scoping review work on interventions and their acceptability for young people who have experienced early adverse childhood experiences. We are starting to build local connections with this research including with young people with lived experience and partner organisations delivering work in this field to inform the next stages of the research and embed it in real life experiences.

Dr Tom Jenkins and Dr Atyyia Nisar are pictured presenting work on single session digital interventions for young adults, the work has been led by Dr Maria Loades. You can find out more about the work here and access single session interventions and take part in further research here

Partnerships Update

As well as welcoming a number of external partners to University of Bath for our launch event, we have also been out and about at events such as attending a Nature Based Practice event at Bath City Farm. We were lucky to see the launch of their new therapy space, which has been developed and used in partnership with Avon and Wiltshire mental health partnership (AWP).
We also shared an overview of the work and involvement opportunities for organisations and young people to get involved with research at the Wiltshire and Swindon Community Foundation, Youth Work Network meeting.
Further partnerships include conversations with ICB and local authority public health partners to discuss how we can work together to respond to local themes and feed into local priority areas. In particular, Tom Freeman will be hearing from the leads for drug and alcohol services in public health to hear about their local priorities to respond to this in his research.

Dr Pamela Jacobsen and Harriet Rose attended Bath and North East Somerset Annual Suicide Prevention stakeholder event, where we were able to share the overarching research gaols and aims and consider how partner organisations might want to get involved with the research. We heard from clinicians in the NHS, colleagues from Public Health in BANES. We also looked at how we might collaborate across BANES to support training for staff around suicide prevention.

Patient and Public Involvement

We have launched our central youth advisory group, we are next meeting these young people at Trowbridge Futures. We will be meeting with these young people monthly and we have planned to work with them to both inform the design of the Bath MHRG website and review findings of the scoping literature review of existing research on trauma and adverse childhood experiences.
As research is getting underway, we are starting to make links to hear from those with relevant lived experience to shape and guide the research process and tools. We have reached out to Way UK and SMASH in Swindon, to make sure we are reaching young people in Swindon. We hope to attend a Change makers group and hear their voice and gain input into the design of interview guides and questions for the research into ADHD and conduct problems. We are looking forward to working with them and co-designing interview guides and discussing language use and approach to this study.

Resources and Information

A recent article in the Guardian highlighted how underrepresented young people are in medical trials. This highlights the importance of our work and the focus on young people’s input into mental health research which centres their needs and prioritises co-produced interventions and resources.
You can read the full article here, but some quotes from the article below highlight the disparity and impact of this underrepresentation.
“people aged 18 to 24 make up 8% of the population but only 4.4% take part in medical research.”
“Involvement in research means that health conditions and treatments are more focused on the needs of the population and that the outputs respond to this need.”
“Millions of young people risk missing out on new treatments for health conditions and having to use medicines that are unsafe, ineffective or inappropriate because so few take part in medical research, experts have warned.”
“Though less affected by life-threatening conditions such as cancer and heart disease, young adults still experience a significant burden of disease. Almost half – 45% – of those aged 24 or under have a long-term physical or mental health condition.”