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Researchers from Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� and UMC Utrecht are joining forces with community partners. During a festive raffle organised by Dynamics of Youth (UU) and Child Health (UMCU), four booster grants were awarded. Next year will see the launch of four studies into a range of subjects: adolescents’ experiences with psychiatric medication, a tool to test social cognition in toddlers, language development in extremely premature infants, and guidelines for mental health and other professionals to discuss child abuse.

Young and medicated lives: Looking for personal narratives of mental health medications in generations Y and Z

Since the 1990s, psychiatric medication has been increasingly prescribed to children and adolescents in the Netherlands. This is especially true for antidepressants and ADHD medication, but also antipsychotics prescribed as “” sleeping pills. These days, there are concerns about the increase in psychiatric medication use. Since there is a long waiting list for mental health services and mental health problems among teenagers and people in their twenties are on the rise, a further increase in the use of medication is not inconceivable.

But how do young people themselves feel about this? What narratives do representatives of generations Y and Z have about their experiences with psychiatric medication? What effects did users experience on their minds, bodies and lives? How did doctors inform them about the expected effects and side effects of medication at the start of the course of treatment? And how do they share these narratives: through autobiographical stories, films, documentaries, art, poems, blogs, vlogs, pop songs, social media posts, or reels?

This interdisciplinary project is a partnership between Professor of History of Psychiatry Gemma Blok (UU), Professor of Innovation in Mental Health Care (UMCU) and experiential expert and founder of . Together, they will adopt a medical humanities approach to focus on an analysis of personal narratives and depictions of psychiatric medication use.

Building trust through inquiry: looking for guidelines to let doctors and psychologists discuss childhood sexual abuse

Childhood sexual abuse is common. Using secrecy, manipulation and verbal threats, child abuse creates chronic stress, which can be accompanied by physical and gynaecological symptoms.

When young people who have suffered or are suffering childhood sexual abuse visit a doctor or psychologist, they do not always tell them about these traumatic events. Both patients and doctors can find it difficult to talk about sexual abuse. Gynaecologists are often not adequately trained to have these conversations, but psychologists are also reluctant to ask about sexual abuse that might be related to the problems the patient is presenting with.

Sexual abuse is a difficult subject, which is precisely why it is important for mental health and other professionals to build trust with patients. Victims often do not talk about the abuse until they are adults. An appropriate and sensitive approach to sexual abuse by healthcare professionals can ensure that victims talk about it sooner, possibly stopping the abuse earlier and starting treatment earlier.

As part of their research, gynaecologist (UMC Utrecht), Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology Odilia Laceulle (UU) and clinical psychologist and head of the National Psychotrauma Centre (UMC Utrecht) will conduct a Delphi study.

As the research group wrote in its project proposal: “We will be surveying psychologists, paediatricians and gynaecologists to come to a consensus on how to improve communication with adolescents and young people about child abuse. The aim of the study is to produce guidelines that will increase patient comfort and trust between patients and caregivers. We also hope this will lower the threshold for talking about sexual abuse and the risk of becoming a victim again. The guidelines will be adopted by the Sexual Assault Centre (CSG), the national organisation that supports victims of sexual violence.”

Mapping social cognition in toddlers

Learning to understand how other people feel, adjusting your behaviour to respond to others and joint attention all fall under the heading of “social cognition”. Social cognition allows children to understand themselves and others and establish contact. Being able to measure social cognition can help assess child development. If a child seems to be behind in development, steps can be taken. At the moment, it is still difficult to measure social cognition properly in young children. Tests that already exist rely on language, memory (specifically, working memory) and story comprehension. As a result, problems in social cognition are difficult to distinguish from communication problems.

This study will see Assistant Professor of Psychology with expertise in autism Marieke de Vries, Associate Professor of Early Development and Language Caroline Junge, child and adolescent psychiatrist (UMCU) and Professor of Language Development Elma Blom will work together to trial the Early Socio Cognitive Battery (ESB) in the Netherlands. For this, they will work with publisher and project manager of Hogrefe Uitgevers (psychology publishing). The ESB is a short and simple tool to test social cognition in young children aged two to five. The tool is independent of language, working memory or story comprehension. Therefore, this method may be well suited to different groups. The ESB was developed in the UK, but has not yet been tested in the Netherlands.

In its submitted project proposal, the group wrote: “We hope to conclude that the ESB can be a useful tool in a variety of different clinical settings. We will expand the relevance of the ESB by collecting data from children with suspected autism to discover what other factors may influence ESB scores.”

Is early language development a predictor of later outcomes in extremely premature infants?

The EMMA study will investigate whether an extra-strong MRI system (7t MRI) can be used to predict whether extremely pre-term infants will experience problems later in life. The researchers will examine whether language development is also a future predictor of later outcomes in extremely premature infants.

This project is a partnership between Assistant Professor of Language Proficiency Tessel Boerma (UU), Associate Professor in the High Field MR research group (UMCU), Assistant Professor in the High Field MR research group (UMCU) and experiential expert . They will be adding the N-CDI, a questionnaire on children’s language abilities, to the EMMA study for children aged one and two. They will also observe and assess two-year-old children playing freely on their language skills.

“If these methods prove to be predictors of later outcomes in extremely premature infants, we will incorporate them into future clinical follow-up at the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital. To this end, it is important to include the perspective of patients as well, which is why Amber is also involved in this project as an experiential expert”, the researchers wrote in their proposal.