Welcome to Mind the Kids, the ACAMH podcast where research meets real-world practice in child and adolescent mental health. In this episode, 'Anxiety, does the apple fall far from the tree?', Dr. Jane Gilmour and Professor Umar Toseeb explore whether anxiety runs in families, what the latest research says about clinically anxious parents and children’s anxiety disorders, and how genetic, environmental, and family factors may shape risk.

Joining them is Dr Sigrid Elfström, lead author of a population-based study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The conversation also looks at why diagnosis is not destiny, why prevention matters, and how to communicate risk without parent blaming.

They discuss whether anxiety can be transmitted through family processes, what the findings mean in practice, and how clinicians and parents can think about risk without assuming it is deterministic.

This episode covers: Children’s anxiety disorders. Clinically anxious parents. Parent-child mental health. Genetic and environmental influences. Family processes and prevention. Evidence-based child mental health research.

Read the paper 'A detailed investigation of anxiety disorders in children of clinically anxious parents: a population-based study' - https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.70085
Sigrid Elfström, Susanne Wicks, Christina Dalman, Johan Åhlén
First published: 04 December 2025

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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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