ACAMH Website Content Types
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Operationalizing the ICF Core Sets for Autism and ADHD: From Framework to Feasible Tool
Alehagen, Bölte, and colleagues conducted a feasibility study to develop and user-test an online platform for the ICF Core Sets for autism and ADHD. The study found that the platform was easy to use, acceptable to participants, and capable of capturing the diversity of functioning profiles, with iterative revisions addressing user feedback. The tool is now ready for psychometric validation.
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Parent-Child Interaction Therapy: What Makes Coaching Work?
A new study by Scherpbier et al. (2025) explores how therapists support parents in learning and using positive interaction strategies during Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). Using 125 video-recorded sessions from 17 Dutch families, the authors applied lag sequential analysis to identify which therapist coaching techniques were most likely to encourage parents to use key interaction […]
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STEPS in the Community: Pilot Trial Offers Promising Pathways for Autistic Adults Transitioning to Independence
Up to 70,000 autistic teenagers enter adulthood in the US each year, yet many report feeling unprepared for the leap. The Stepped Transition to Employment and Postsecondary Success (STEPS) programme is a goal-oriented intervention designed to bridge this gap.
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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia in Teens: What New Research Reveals
A 2024 systematic review and meta‑analysis by Galgut and colleagues highlights that cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT‑I) markedly improves insomnia severity and, to a lesser extent, subjective sleep quality in teenagers. These findings strengthen the evidence for offering CBT‑I—delivered face‑to‑face or digitally—as a first‑line treatment for young people who struggle to sleep.
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Debate – Where to next for universal school-based mental health interventions?
We are delighted to announce the inaugural CAMH journal debate on universal school-based mental health interventions. The session will be chaired by Prof Umar Toseeb, featuring a panel of leading experts — Dr. Lucy Foulkes, Jack Andrews, Prof. Bronwynè Coetzee, Dr. Louise Birrell, and Dr. Emma Carter who authored recent debate papers on universal school-based mental health interventions in the CAMH journal.
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Self-harm and Suicide Risk in Young People: A Call for Personalised Assessment
Self-harm affects roughly one in six adolescents and is a potent predictor of suicide. Yet the best-known risk-prediction tools correctly identify only a small minority of future suicides. Instead of relying on scores, clinicians should carry out compassionate, personalised assessments, followed by rapid follow-up and collaborative safety plans.
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Trauma to a child of being in the Secure Care System; How can we improve processes
Led by Dr. Heidi Hales “In this talk I will consider the structure of the secure system set up to contain and care for children in young people in the United Kingdom, who are complex situations and show risk behaviours that are considered to need containment.”
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Adopting a lifespan lens to understanding females on the autism spectrum
In this session, Dr. Harrop presents up-to-date research spanning early childhood through adulthood that characterizes the profiles and experiences of autistic females.
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Transdiagnostic CBT for Emotional Disorders: The Unified Protocol for Young People
This short course introduces participants to the Unified Protocols for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders in Children and Adolescents (UP-C and UP-A), a cognitive-behavioral treatment framework designed to address a wide range of emotional difficulties, including anxiety, depression, irritability, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms.
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Female ADHD and Hormones – The Perfect Storm
Dr Lotta Borg Skoglund, leads a session that explores the underrepresented biological differences between sexes in ADHD research and clinical practice, despite a growing awareness of ADHD in girls and women. The session highlights how the historical male-centric lens on ADHD has led to delayed diagnosis and mismanagement in females, particularly during hormonally sensitive life phases.