Early intervention

  • Reflections from the room

    EBSA in young people: complexity, pressure, and the value of slowing down

    When a child stops going to school, the wish to help them back quickly is easy to understand. Emotionally based school avoidance rarely has a single cause, though, and the pace of a response can matter as much as its content. One thought runs through what follows: that slowing down can sometimes do more for a child than any effort to hurry a return.

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  • Yan Li and Christian Hakulinen

    Mental Health and School Achievement: Why Gender and Age at Onset Matter

    Discover how mental health conditions impact school performance in children and adolescents. Explore research on over 837,000 young people, highlighting the effects of anxiety, depression, gender differences, and age of onset on academic achievement—and why early support matters.

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  • Portrait of little girl aged . Moody and confused girl. Mistreated child.

    Why Trauma-Focused CBT Isn’t Reaching Children

    Trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy (TF-CBT) is one of the best-supported psychological treatments for children and adolescents with post-traumatic stress symptoms. Yet the existence of an evidence-based treatment does not mean that children and families can access it in routine care. Blog by Professor Francisco Musich.

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  • very sad boy. offended a child. close up portrait looking at the camera. feels lonely misses parents. freedom Ukraine

    Assessing and Treating PTSD in Young Children 

    Learn how PTSD appears in young children, why it’s often missed, and how PTSD-YC criteria and CBT-3M improve early identification and treatment. Blog by Professor Francisco Musich.

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  • michael kaess

    Professor Michael Kaess

    Michael Kaess is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Bern as well as the Director of the University Hospital of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Bern in Switzerland. Professor Kaess is a Joint Editor of CAMH. 

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  • dasha nicholls new

    Developments in Eating Disorders Research

    As everyone’s thoughts are dominated by the impact of COVID-19 on mental health and wellbeing, it seems pertinent to start by thinking how people with or at risk of eating disorders may have been affected. Research suggests that the impacts differ according to the type of eating disorder concerns and behaviours.

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  • Interventions for reducing loneliness seem effective in young people

    Meta-analyses of interventions aimed at reducing loneliness among young people are distinctly lacking in the field. Now, Alice Eccles and Pamela Qualter have addressed this gap by compiling a review for Child and Adolescent Mental Health on interventions to reduce loneliness in young people.

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  • Conflicts of interest are under-reported in autism early intervention research

    Researchers in the USA have studied, for the first time, the types, prevalence and effects of conflicts of interest (COI) in autism early intervention research.

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  • Early cognitive therapy for traumatised young people works and is also cost-effective

    More than half of children and adolescents will experience traumatic events like vehicle accidents, house fires, or violence.  However, brief counselling for young people in the immediate aftermath of an acute traumatic event has not be shown to be any more effective than not intervening and allowing natural recovery to take its course.

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  • Machine learning improves ADI-R efficiency

    Early interventions in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are essential to improve communication and behavioural skills in affected children. Now, researchers have used machine learning to derive new instrument algorithms that may help practitioners screen for autism more efficiently and effectively.

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