What does it take to support children’s mental health and learning when their classrooms are in the middle of a conflict zone?

In this Mind the Kids episode ‘Delivering School Intervention: Culture, Context and Conflict’ we explore how research can really work for children and young people in the real world, not just on paper.

Dr. Jane Gilmour and Professor Umar Toseeb sit down with Professor Jean Francois Trani to delve into a classroom based psychosocial intervention delivered in rural Afghan primary schools during a period of political upheaval.

Together, they unpack how an international research team and local community partners co designed and delivered a universal, school based programme that aimed to improve mental health, boost learning, and reduce stigma in a setting marked by decades of conflict. They discuss what it means to adapt activities to local culture, the difference between accumulated and intergenerational trauma, and why task shifting to trained community members can be so powerful in low resource settings.

If you’re interested in community led interventions, global South research, or how universal school provision can support both wellbeing and inclusion, you won’t want to miss this.

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Why do so many studies – and headlines – focus on what goes wrong in childhood, when some young people go through adversity and still find ways to thrive?

In this episode of Mind the Kids, 'Protecting Mental Health, the Power of Positive', Dr. Jamie Hanson talks to hosts Dr. Jane Gilmour and Prof Umar Toseeb, about how early life adversity, positive affect, and internalizing difficulties like anxiety and depression are connected over time, using data from the large ABCD cohort in the United States. They unpack what counts as “early life adversity” beyond classic ACEs, what psychologists really mean by positive affect (and why it is not just the absence of negative mood), and how different trajectories of positivity across middle childhood may help explain which young people are most at risk – and who might be buffered.
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The conversation moves from theory to practice: why optimism and joy are trainable, how strength‑based programmes and everyday passions (sport, music, clubs, “the best apple I’ve ever had”) can support resilience, and what this all means for schools, policymakers, and anyone trying to help children grow after difficult early experiences.

You can read the main JCPP paper discussed in this episode, “Positive affect as a developmental mediator of early adversity and internalizing psychopathology" at https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.70104

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Why do some teenagers seem permanently jet lagged, wide awake at midnight and exhausted at 8am? And what does that actually do to their mood, their learning, and their long term mental health?

In this episode of Mind the Kids, titled ‘Regular sleep, the balm of hurt minds’, Dr. Konstantin Drexl joins hosts Dr. Jane Gilmour and Professor Umar Toseeb, to unpack the science of adolescent sleep: from what terms like chronotype, circadian rhythm and REM sleep really mean, to how sleep loss and anxiety feed into each other in everyday life.

Together, they explore why regular sleep can act as a protective factor for some young people, why others seem especially sensitive to even small disruptions, and what this might mean for school start times, smartphones at bedtime, and whole family sleep hygiene. Whether you are a parent, teacher, clinician or researcher, this conversation offers clear, practical insights into how supporting teenage sleep could be one of the simplest ways to support teenage minds.

You can read the main JCPP Advances paper discussed in this episode, “Toward an idiographic understanding of the role of sleep-mood dynamics in adolescents' internalizing symptoms” https://doi.org/10.1002/jcv2.70082

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