NIHRDataInsights/HRCSData huggingface dataset:
Title: Parents InC.: A feasibility randomised controlled trial of a parenting support programme focussed on families affected by ADHD
Funder: Chief Scientist Office, Scotland

Abstract: This project is the first step in testing a new parenting programme, called Parents InC, which aims to help parents of children with ADHD. It will help us find out whether we can do a much bigger study in the future that will tell us whether Parents InC works well. ADHD is a big problem for the children who suffer from it and their families but we know very little about what really works in the real world. We need to know if Parents InC is as helpful for families in comparison to the most tried and tested alternative parenting programme, called Incredible Years, whilst also offering good value for money. First we need to see whether parents are happy to be randomly allocated to Parents InC or Incredible Years (a bit like tossing a coin). We need to find out whether enough families want to be involved, whether we can find out the information we need about them and can follow up enough families later. The proposed study will try to find these things out, so that we can design a future, bigger, study to find out whether Parents InC is good value for families of children with ADHD.


Research activity codes: 8.4 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGIES (HEALTH SERVICES)
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Antihypertensives as repurposed treatments for mood disorders: Scottish national linkage and UK Biobank investigation
Funder: Chief Scientist Office, Scotland

Abstract: Our long-term goal is to assess the protective effects of endothelin-1 blocker drugs in patients treated with VEGFI. Before doing so, we must better explore whether VEGFIs cause blood vessel narrowing and if endothelin-1 blockers prevent this. We will assess this in healthy volunteers using a special technique called ‘forearm plethysmography’. We will examine the effect of VEGFI on blood flow and also the effect of simultaneous administration of endothelin-1 blockers. These will be given at doses that produce local effects in the arm without affecting the rest of the body.


Research activity codes: 6.1 PHARMACEUTICALS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Positive written disclosure as an intervention to improve the psychological and physical wellbeing of older caregivers of people with psychosis: a feasibility study
Funder: Dunhill Medical Trust

Abstract: In the UK, 1.5 million care for someone with mental illness. In response to a survey on mental health caregivers, the majority were over 60, with 32% 60-69, 20% 70-79 and 5% over 80 (Rethink, 2003). Caregivers have high risk of morbidity (including depression, cardiovascular disease and stress) which are exacerbated when caring for someone with psychosis. Psychosocial therapeutic interventions can reduce caregivers’ stress and depression, improve quality of life and coping strategies, but are time consuming and difficult to access. Positive written disclosure (PWD), a simple, low-cost, accessible intervention, improves psychological wellbeing in caregivers in general (31-85 years but caring for people with illnesses not as stigmatising, severe or chronic as psychosis). Caring for a person with psychosis is associated with great stress and uncertainty due to the extreme nature of their impoverished functioning. This proposal will determine the feasibility of PWD in older caregivers of people with psychosis.


Research activity codes: 7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS;6.6 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIOURAL
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Attention to threat, attentional control and early signs of anxiety in preschool children.
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: It is impossible for us to process all that goes on in the world around us. Instead we pay attention to specific things like the clouds in the sky or the sound of a dog barking. Sometimes we purposefully control what we pay attention to and other times things seem to 'grab' our attention. By acting as a filter, attention plays a fundamental role in shaping our experience of the world. Even if two individuals are exposed to exactly the same environment, their subjective experience can vary considerably, depending on which aspects of the environment they pay attention to. Psychological theory suggests that individuals who have a tendency to pay attention to things that are threatening are more likely to experience anxiety and might be more vulnerable to emotional problems during times of stress. There is already some research supporting this idea but it is all based on work with adults or older children. It is very common for young children to feel fearful or anxious from time to time. However, some children feel so anxious that they cannot do some of the things they would like to do such as approaching a group of children to make friends or staying away from home overnight. Even young children can show early signs of anxiety. Most of these children will go on to become confident and happy, but some go on to have problems with anxiety in later childhood and more long-term social and emotional problems. One of the aims of this research is to see whether attention towards threat, or children's ability to control their attention, helps predict longer-term problems with anxiety. The research will make use of exciting new technologies, adapted especially for children, which allow us to capture what children are looking at and record their brain activity whilst they look at pictures. As well as these simple computer-based games, the research also includes some tasks that parents and children complete together. These are to help us to understand whether parents are able to affect what their child pays attention to. This could be important for helping children who are at risk of developing anxiety problems. This research is important for two main reasons: first, because it may help us to identify children who are likely to experience emotional problems; secondly, it may help us to design new programmes that we can use to decrease the chances of these children having ongoing problems with anxiety. This would not only improve the quality of life of the children in question and reduce the emotional burden on their parents, but it would decrease the cost of long-term mental health problems.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Risky beginnings
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Early childhood conduct problems are very common and predict multiple adverse life-course outcomes, such that understanding their origins is an urgent challenge. This proposal extends the applicants' previous work on family influences on children's abilities to regulate their thoughts and behaviours in several ways: by focusing on the first two years of life; by examining effects of paternal as well as maternal influences; by integrating this cognitive perspective with the co-investigators' expertise in assessing individual differences at biological and social levels; and finally by adopting a multi-site design that provides a stringent test of the generalisability of study findings. A sample of 400 expectant mothers and their partners (200 in the UK and 100 in the USA and the Netherlands) will be recruited using an enriched sampling design to maximize the participation of expectant parents showing low levels of well-being. Self-regulatory skills will be assessed using validated experimental methods. We hope to examine the complex interplay between a range of social factors (e.g., quality of family relationships) cognitive factors (in both parents and infants) and biological factors (maternal and infant levels of the stress hormone cortisol) as predictors of infant adjustment and well-being. A key strength of the study is its inclusion of fathers, as many basic questions regarding parental influences remain unanswered: For example are the relations between parental predictors and infant outcomes similar in nature and magnitude for fathers and mothers? Building on the rapid growth of studies that highlight variation in children's susceptibility to environmental influences, the proposed study will explore contrasts in the nature and magnitude of family predictors of infant adjustment that relate to characteristics of the infant (e.g., stress reactivity), the parent (e.g., parenting style) and the culture (e.g., level of societal support for individuals making the transition to parenthood).


Research activity codes: 2.1 BIOLOGICAL AND ENDOGENOUS FACTORS;2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH
Title: EpiFASSTT: Epigenetic effects on children's psychosocial development in a randomised trial of Folic Acid Supplementation in Second and Third Trimester
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Increasingly accurate surveys of human health throughout the course of life has led experts to propose that stresses on the child while still in the mother's womb can affect its health much later in life. While many factors can potentially act as stressors, the majority of these are difficult to examine thoroughly in human populations and so findings are based largely on observational work. Among concrete factors known to affect child health is the essential nutrient folate, which has been proven to play a role in preventing neural tube closure defects (e.g. Spina bifida) when deficient during the first three months (first trimester) of pregnancy. Current UK guidance is therefore to supplement with folate during first trimester only. However other observational studies suggest that folate deficiency in trimesters two and three also affects children's brain development. Proof for this can only be provided by the gold standard test which is a Randomised Control Trial, where half the participants take folate in trimesters 2 and 3 and half do not, with participants assigned randomly to supplement or no supplement. We recently conducted such a trial (Folic Acid Supplementation in the Second and Third Trimester (FASSTT)) and showed that folate levels in blood were substantially improved in mothers receiving the supplement and in their children. Follow-up work with the children at age seven showed improved outcomes with regard to several measures of intellectual and emotional development, including verbal reasoning ability and emotional resilience. Such long-term effects on health are thought to be mediated by a semi-permanent trace on the genes of the affected person called an epigenetic mark (from epi- (above) and gene). Here we plan to do a thorough search for possible epigenetic marks in the children from the FASSTT trial and their mothers. The levels of such marking detected, and the genes affected by it, will tell us much about the extent to which environmental stressors can affect a person's future health. Likewise it will give us concrete markers for assessing the impact of factors such as nutritional inputs on the health of the child. The results of our study will also inform policy regarding food supplements and pregnancy/early life social care, with tangible benefits for children, their mums, and in the wider sphere the social and health services which provide them with support.


Research activity codes: 3.3 NUTRITION AND CHEMOPREVENTION
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Early Learning Abilities Promoting Success in Education (ELAPSE): Findings from the Millennium Cohort Study and directions of a new longitudinal study
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Despite the wide acknowledgment that adverse early life conditions negatively influence cognitive development (e.g. longitudinal UK data Feinstein, 2003; Jerrim & Vignoles, 2013; Schoon, Hope, Ross, & Duckworth, 2010), little is known about how this influence operates and changes over time (Shonkoff & Levitt, 2010). The aim of the proposal is to investigate quantitatively the developmental mechanisms by which children's early learning skills and life conditions result in different later educational outcomes. It has two research strands. The first strand's purpose is conducting secondary analyses of the longitudinal Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) data in order to distinguish children's profiles, examine developmental trajectories, and estimate models of early child development asking specifically how early learning abilities influence school readiness and later educational success. The second strand's goal is undertaking a systematic review and organising a panel of experts in order to inform a feasibility evaluation for a future longitudinal study of early development, with a significant emphasis on the role of self-regulation and play. The intention would be to develop a proposal for an enhancement for the new ESRC birth cohort study, the Life Study. These two strands will take a child-centred developmental approach and consider children's characteristics across socio-economic backgrounds. The project will inform policy aimed at promoting children's school readiness to reduce later educational disadvantage. Consequently, the proposal targets two of the ESRC's strategic priorities, i.e. influencing behaviours and informing interventions (by understanding the development of learning-related skills) in order to promote a vibrant and fair society (by contributing to the reduction of the educational attainment gap). This is an interdisciplinary initiative bringing together developmental and educational sciences. It makes use of an existing longitudinal database and develops capability in advanced quantitative methods, all of which is encouraged by the ESRC. Funding this project represents an investment in the career development of young quantitative researcher addressing social issues about child poverty and early education through the understanding of early developmental psychological processes. It involves a rigorous skills development plan and a strong strategy for generating high impact upon academic and non-academic users.


Research activity codes: 2.4 SURVEILLANCE AND DISTRIBUTION;3.1 PRIMARY PREVENTION INTERVENTIONS TO MODIFY BEHAVIOURS OR PROMOTE WELL-BEING
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Reconceptualising word learning difficulties in children with autism using novel empirical and computational methods.
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Word learning is a vital aspect of children's language development. However, many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have enormous difficulty learning words and approximately 30% have virtually no language at 9 years of age. As ASD affects 1 in 68 children worldwide, investigating why so many of these children struggle to learn words is a global research priority and a necessary precursor to designing effective interventions. This project will explore multiple stages of word learning in minimally-verbal children with ASD in order to isolate the source, or sources, of their difficulties. In a series of experiments involving children with ASD and children with typical development, we will compare how these groups (a) identify the meanings of unfamiliar words, (b) retain the meanings of words over time, and (c) generalise words to novel contexts. We will also assess how these stages of word learning are influenced by autistic children's reduced sensitivity to informative social cues, such as gaze and gesture. Based on these novel data, we will develop a new integrative account of word learning deficits in ASD that incorporates multiple aspects of word learning and how they are influenced by social difficulties. This account will be supported by a new computational model simulating a child with ASD learning new words. The model will indicate how the stages of word learning might interact to produce the problems observed in children with ASD. Consequently, this modelling will provide insight that could not be obtained by simply observing behaviour. Moreover, it will yield numerous theoretical hypotheses for future research and provide a basis for predicting the effects of new interventions that may promote word learning in children with ASD. The findings from this research will have important implications for practice in Special Education. By examining multiple aspects of word learning, our studies will identify specific weaknesses that can be targeted by interventions and strengths to capitalise on. We will also discover whether word learning in children with ASD can be improved by directing their attention and identify the best way of doing this (e.g. social or non-social cues). Crucially, this project will provide a necessary foundation on which to develop new evidence-based interventions that scaffold each stage of word learning, thus providing optimal learning conditions for children with ASD.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Adaptive Social learning in Typical and Atypical Developing Adolescents
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Summary - Social learning in adolescents with conduct problems Adolescents with conduct problems (CP) present severe behavioural problems and have difficulties in adjusting to social norms. Children and adolescents with CP appear to process social information in an atypical way. Hostile attribution biases, lack of empathy, and both under- and over-reactivity to emotional facial expressions have been observed in this population. Although the social information processing profiles of children and adolescents with CP may appear atypical when compared with peers of the same age, it is conceivable that their cognitive/affective profiles match life histories that have set strong priors, which hamper adaptive social learning. In other words, compared with the mainstream population, children and adolescents with CP may have adapted to different social environments (more chaotic and unpredictable, with untrustworthy adults) and whilst their social learning appears maladaptive to the society at large, it may match the environment in which they grew up. It is also of note that children and adolescents with CP are a heterogeneous population, with some seemingly fearless and lacking in empathy (those with high callous-unemotional traits; high-CU) and others very emotionally labile (those with low callous-unemotional traits; low-CU). Such traits may further constrain individual social learning during development. In short, it is not clear how the seeming disregard for social norms may constrain further social learning in individuals with CP. It is also unclear to what extent childhood environment and child specific traits account for social learning patterns of CP adolescents. The current study has been set up to investigate these questions.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH
Title: Long term economic impact of childhood emotional and behavioural problems
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: This study will evaluate the economic impacts in adulthood of mental health problems experienced by children and young people. Mental health problems are common among children and young people and it is known that they can have long lasting effects into adulthood. These effects have economic consequences, both in the short term (e.g., through the costs of health care and educational support) and into adulthood and across the life-span (e.g. service use in adulthood due to continued difficulties, loss of earnings and unemployment). There is only limited information on the relationship between early difficulties and economic impacts in adulthood. Existing studies only look at short-term impacts, or focus on specific communities or types of mental disorder. Data from three British birth cohorts will be used, providing detailed information on people born in 1946, 1958 and 1970. Data have been collected from these groups of people from birth throughout their lives, including information on their mental health, use of mental health services, education, employment and income. These data will be analysed to understand how mental health problems among children and young people are linked to different outcomes during adulthood. Our study has four parts: First, we will analyse the economic impacts up to mid and later adulthood associated with childhood mental health problems, by looking at how childhood difficulties are linked to specific events in adulthood (for example, using services for mental health problems, having been in contact with the criminal justice system, a person's level of income, whether they have received benefits) and work out the costs of these outcomes. Second, we will investigate whether the effects of having a mental health problem early in life influence various economic impacts over the lifespan. At what ages are costs greatest? How do these cost patterns differ among individuals, for example by gender, ethnicity or socioeconomic group? Do some types of mental health problem have higher costs later in life? We will also look at how changes in educational, health and social care policies have influenced costs. Third, we plan to understand and assess the potential for the long term economic effects of early intervention for mental health problems and the impact needed for early interventions to be cost saving. Finally, we plan to use the findings from this research as a basis for more detailed studies in the future. By taking into account the new information this research provides about the relationship between childhood difficulties and their economic impact during mid and later adulthood, future studies can investigate these associations in more detail (for example, types of childhood difficulties, costs associated with these over the life course, causal pathways for these costs and benefits of various mental health interventions).


Research activity codes: 7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS;8.2 HEALTH AND WELFARE ECONOMICS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH