'mind the kids': an acamh podcast by The Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health

AI chatbots can feel warm, human and tailored, but this brings real risks when the advice is wrong or incomplete, especially for vulnerable young people with eating or body-image concerns. 

Trauma-informed and trauma-responsive care are at the heart of this thoughtful conversation about how we support children and young people who have experienced adversity.

In this episode of Mind the Kids, hosts Dr Jane Gilmour, honorary consultant clinical psychologist and Child Development Programme Director at UCL, and Professor Umar Toseeb, Professor of Psychology at the University of York, explore what happens when children and young people with severe or complex mental health difficulties are admitted to hospital.

For many families of autistic young people, leaving school feels less like a gentle transition and more like falling off a cliff into a fragmented, underfunded adult service system where no one is clearly in charge. In this Mind the Kids episode 'Navigating the service cliff - Supporting autistic youth transition into adulthood', Mark Tebbs speaks with Professor Julie Lowndes Taylor from Vanderbilt University Medical Center about ASSIST (Advocating for SupportS to Improve Service Transition), a 12‑week parent advocacy programme designed to equip families with the knowledge, skills and confidence to navigate that maze.​

In this special episode of Mind the Kids, “Tics: Education, Education, Education”, hosts Dr. Jane Gilmour, Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Child Development Programme Director at UCL, and Professor Umar Toseeb from the University of York, take a deep dive into Tourette’s syndrome—what it is, how it manifests, and how it’s often misunderstood.

This episode of 'Mind the Kids: Lessons from the ABCD data revolution' unpacks why “how we measure puberty” really matters for understanding adolescent mental health and development. Professor Adriene Beltz talks to Mark Tebbs about the huge US Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which is following nearly 12,000 young people over 10 years with regular brain scans and surveys, giving an unprecedented window into how early experiences shape later outcomes.​

hThis powerful episode dives into how a mother’s own childhood trauma can quietly shape the emotional lives of her children – and how that cycle can be broken. Drawing on a rare 12‑year study of around 300 mostly Black, highly disadvantaged families in the US Midwest, Dr Meeyoung Min unpacks how her team followed mothers and babies from birth through early adolescence to understand what really drives later mental health.​

 What if a baby’s wobbly reach for a spoon or a make-believe tea party could quietly change the way language unfolds? In this episode of Mind The Kids, “Building Blocks: how genes, motor skills, and family shape language,” host Mark Tebbs talks with Dr Beate St Pourcain and Dr Ellen Verhoeff from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics about what it really means to develop language in a developing body.

 Why do some children find learning a little harder, and could their genes hold part of the answer? In this episode of Mind the Kids, entitled ‘Genetic clues to classroom struggles’, host Mark Tebbs talks with Dr. Marie-Pier Larose from the University of Turku about her recent JCPP paper.

Energized, driven, “on a high” – or at the edge of something more serious? This Mind the Kids episode, “Energized or at risk? Distinguishing subclinical hypomania in adolescents”, explores how to tell the difference between healthy teenage intensity and something more problematic.