Summaries of research findings

Postnatal depression affects approximately 24% of new mothers, and it can potentially have long-term effects on the mother and child’s wellbeing. Researchers at King’s College London explored whether a specially designed group singing intervention, Breathe Melodies for Mums, by Breathe Arts Health Research, could help improve mental health during this period.  

The study followed 199 mothers across south London experiencing symptoms of postnatal depression and invited them to join a 10-week programme. 133 of those mothers joined group singing sessions, while 66 participants, acting as the control group, were signposted to preexisting mother-baby activity groups that did not involve singing. 

Mothers in both the singing and control groups showed improvements in their mood at week 10 after they had completed either the singing intervention or control activity. However, only those in the singing group continued to show improvements in their mood up to six months after the intervention ended, demonstrating the long-lasting effects of the singing. The singing group also had a much lower dropout rate (23% of participants at 10 weeks) compared with the controls (43% of participants at 10 weeks). 

The group provides a viable intervention for those women who might not otherwise access traditional healthcare,  and a cost-effective option for the NHS, with the researchers finding that the cost of the singing intervention falls well within the range the UK healthcare regulator - the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) - recommends the NHS pay for interventions.  

Overall, the study highlights group singing as a low‑cost, accessible, and enjoyable option that could complement existing treatments for postnatal depression. It offers a practical way for new mothers to find support, connection, and emotional relief during a time when they may need it most. 

This study is part of the SHAPER programme which is assessing the effectiveness and implementation of arts-in-health interventions. It was funded by Wellcome, and received additional support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). 

Clinical effectiveness, implementation effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a community singing intervention for postnatal depressive symptoms: SHAPER-PND, randomised controlled trial (DOI 10.1192/bjp.2025.10377) (Bind, Pariante et al) was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.  

Neurodivergent young people with autism or ADHD are more likely to experience depression during their teenage years than those who are neurotypical. One reason may be that autistic and ADHD young people often find it harder to manage their emotions – this is called emotion dysregulation.  

However, most research on this topic comes from adults (like parents, teachers, or doctors) describing what they see. It don’t always include the young people’s own voices or the situations they face. Furthermore, the influence of the environment on the young people’s emotional experience is underexplored. 

In this study, researchers spoke directly to 57 young people with autism, ADHD, or both. They asked about upsetting experiences at home, school, or elsewhere, how these made them feel, and how they respond to these.  

Results: From these interviews, we found common themes about what triggered the young people’s emotions and how they responded. The young people spoke of experiences of being in conflict or ignored by others, having to put on a ‘mask’ in social situations, struggling with self-doubt, and with environments that under- or over-stimulate them. They also spoke about what helped prevent experiences from becoming upsetting, about different ways to manage emotional responses during upsets, and about recognising strengths from within. Subtle differences were observed in how these were expressed among the participant groups. Our study highlights common everyday challenges encountered by young people with autism and/or ADHD. 

You can read more about this study from these papers: 

Conclusions: Listening to young people’s own accounts gives new insights into how they manage emotions. These findings are now being used to help design a school-based program to support the mental health of young people with autism and/or ADHD. 

This study was led by researchers at King’s College London and was funded by UK Research and Innovation Medical Research Council. More information about the study is available on our website: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/my-emotions-and-me  

The ADHD Remote Technology (ART) research programme is led by Professor Jonna  Kuntsi  and Professor Richard Dobson at King's College London. The ART research programme uses apps,  smartphones  and watches to learn more about people with ADHD.  

The improvements in technology over the past few years mean we can use wearable devices (like smartwatches) and smartphones to  help  in research and clinical practice . In the future, this can help with research and clinical practice. ART is linked to the RADAR-base  mobile health  platform  ( https://radar-base.org/ )  and involves the collection of information on  factors such as  exercise, sleep, ADHD  symptoms  and medication use so that we can look for patterns that help explain and predict behaviour. Some of this information is collected without the person having to do anything (passive monitoring ,  e.g. from the smartwatch). Other information is given by people in the study, through answering questionnaires or completing tasks online or on their phones (active monitoring).  

A strength of the ART system and RADAR-base is that it can be changed to fit the aims of the specific study. For example, different questionnaires can be included, and  different types  of wearable devices can be used. The long-term aim of the overall ART research programme is to improve  outcomes  and support healthy lifestyles for people with ADHD, by helping them to manage their symptoms and help make sure that any treatment they get is the right fit for them.  

So far, a few projects have used the ART programme. This includes ‘ART-transition’ (funded by the M edical  R esearch  C ouncil ), 'ART-CARMA' (funded by the E uropean Commission ), and the ART pilot study (funded by a King’s Together Strategic grant). Over £4 million funding has been received by the ART team at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s  College London  for these projects.  

ART pilot study

The ADHD Remote Technology (ART) pilot study  involved the  development  of the ART measures .  We tested this system with 20 people who had ADHD and 20 people who did not have ADHD. Each person used the system for ten weeks. They also took part in two online interviews and provided feedback on how they found the study after they had finished their ten weeks. The results from the ART-pilot study showed that the system was easy to use and provided helpful information on differences between individuals with and without ADHD ( Denyer et al., 2023 ;  Sankesara  et al., 2025 ;  Sun et al., 2023 ;  Denyer et al., 2025 ).  

ART-CARMA

The ADHD Remote Technology study of cardiometabolic risk factors   ( such as  changes in  heart rate , blood pressure, weight, smoking, alcohol use, diet, sleep )  and medication adherence  (whether a  patient   take s  their  as prescribed by their doctor )   (ART-CARMA) project then started in 2021. The ART-CARMA project  i s also led by Professor Jonna  Kuntsi  with Professor Richard Dobson and  is  funded by a large ( over  €1.5 million) grant from the European Commission. The team at King’s work closely with a second team in Barcelona, led by Professor Toni Ramos-Quiroga.  

ART-CARMA is part of TIMESPAN, a five-year-long project involving researchers, clinicians, patients, businesses, software developers and care providers across Europe and the world.  

ART-CARMA collects real-world data  on a daily basis , which people  provide  as they go about their daily lives. The ART-CARMA study uses this real-world data to address two main aims. The first main aim of ART-CARMA is to  explore  the extent to which ADHD medication treatment and exercise, both together and on their own, may affect cardiometabolic risks in adults with ADHD (such as obesity or high blood pressure). Our second main aim is to explore when and why people with ADHD take their ADHD medication. The published study protocol includes the full details on  objectives  and methods ( Denyer et al., 2022 ).  

Together, the teams in London and Barcelona recruited 305 adults from adult ADHD clinic waiting lists. These 305 adults provided data for one year, starting just before they began taking ADHD medication. The first research papers from the project have now been published ( Zhang et al., 2025;   Barnes et al., 2025 ) and there will be many more interesting and helpful papers coming out soon.  

Links for papers:   

Denyer 2023 -  JMIR Formative Research - Barriers to and Facilitators of Using Remote Measurement Technology in the Long-Term Monitoring of Individuals With ADHD: Interview Study    

Sankesara  2025 -  JMIR Formative Research - Identifying Digital Markers of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in a Remote Monitoring Setting: Prospective Observational Study  

Sun 2023 -  Remote Administration of ADHD-Sensitive Cognitive Tasks: A Pilot Study -  Shaoxiong  Sun, Hayley Denyer, Heet  Sankesara ,  Qigang  Deng, Yatharth Ranjan, Pauline Conde, Zulqarnain Rashid, Rebecca Bendayan, Philip Asherson, Andrea Bilbow, Madeleine Groom, Chris Hollis, Amos A. Folarin, Richard J. B. Dobson, Jonna Kuntsi, 2023  

Denyer 2025 -  A 10-week remote monitoring study of sleep features and their variability in individuals with and without ADHD | BMC Psychiatry | Springer Nature Link  

Denyer 2022 -  ADHD Remote Technology study of cardiometabolic risk factors and medication adherence (ART-CARMA): a multi-centre prospective cohort study protocol | BMC Psychiatry | Springer Nature Link  

Zhang 2025 -  Remote monitoring of wide-ranging real-world changes in adults following ADHD medication initiation | Translational Psychiatry  

Barnes 2025 -  Perceptions of adults with ADHD on pharmacological treatment initiation and subsequent adherence: a thematic analysis - ScienceDirect  

This study wanted to understand what postpartum care (care after giving birth) is like for women who had drug treatment during pregnancy. The researchers used a visual method called  Photovoice , where people take photos to  express   themselves and  their experiences.  

Three women in London who were receiving drug treatment took part. They joined a Photovoice workshop, had one-on-one interviews where they showed their photos to a researcher, and joined an online group discussion to share their ideas with each other.  

Two of the women used their photos to talk about their time in a  residential assessment centre . They said it often felt lonely, with staff watching them very closely. The third woman used her photos to show her experience of giving birth in hospital. She felt the care was not personal to her needs, and that staff judged her because of her past.  

This study was important because current NICE treatment findings for psychosis are based only on clinical trials and don’t include the views of the experts who deliver therapy. The researchers wanted to find out what clinicians think is the most helpful amount of therapy for psychosis and paranoia. 

Sixteen clinicians took part. They filled out an online questionnaire and joined a group discussion on Microsoft Teams. 

Results: 

The study showed that the “dose” of therapy depends on where it takes place, the treatment plan, and how flexible the therapist can be. Service limits, like funding, also play a role. 

The researchers hope these findings will help create more useful and acceptable treatments for psychosis and paranoia. The study was led by King’s College London and took place remotely between April and September 2023. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666560325000544  

Study overview: Autistic people often talk about  social camouflaging . This means hiding parts of their autistic identity and trying to “fit in” with non-autistic peers. Doing this regularly can make mental health problems more likely.  

Camouflaging can also look like  safety behaviours  used by people with social anxiety. These are things people do to try to make a good impression in social situations. But over time, these behaviours can  actually keep  social anxiety going.  

By looking at how camouflaging and safety behaviours are connected to autism and social anxiety, we can learn better ways to support autistic people who struggle with social anxiety.  

In this study, 61 autistic teenagers and 54 non-autistic teenagers (aged 14–19) took part. They were matched on their levels of social anxiety and asked to fill out online questionnaires about camouflaging, autism traits, safety behaviours, and social anxiety.  

Results:  We found that both autistic and non-autistic teenagers showed overlap between  masking behaviours  (pretending to be non-autistic) and  safety behaviours  (trying hard to come across well). Both were linked to stronger social anxiety symptoms, but not to autism traits.  

This is the first study to show that the overlap between masking and safety behaviours may play a role in keeping social anxiety going in both autistic and non-autistic teenagers.  

Conclusions:  Professionals working with autistic teenagers who have social anxiety should look at how masking and safety behaviours are connected to their anxiety. They can help autistic teenagers by encouraging acceptance of neurodiversity and focusing on their strengths and differences.  

Read the full paper :  https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.13884  

Listen to a podcast interview  with the lead researcher, Dr. Jiedi Lei,  Clinical Psychologist, and Autism Researcher, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London.  

https://acamhlearn.org/Learning/The_Relationship_Between_Social_Camouflaging_in_Autism_and_Safety_Behaviours_in_Social_Anxiety/12d6435a-0e55-4d09-9652-f24687c00b04