Project Details page

Overview

I want to learn more about how mental health problems develop. This is because we don’t totally understand why some young people begin to struggle with their mental health as they get older. Of course everyone feels a bit anxious and sad from time to time! But for some people it can get really bad and get in the way of their life.

I’m really interested in learning more about mood and how it can become a problem for some people. In particular, I want to know what kinds of things make someone experience unstable mood. This means having big changes in their mood, sometimes feeling very low and sometimes feeling really high. Although everyone experiences small changes in their mood from day to day (which is totally normal!), some people experience much bigger changes in their mood. These can get really hard to manage and start to cause problems, for example at work, with friends and doing hobbies.  

We know that there isn’t one cause for this. One thing that can make unstable mood problems more likely is if you have a parent who has had a similar problem. That’s because mood problems can sometimes run in families. However, just because someone has a parent who has experienced changes in their mood, doesn’t mean they will too. Researchers think it’s probably a combination of lots of factors coming together (e.g. genes, your environment, your personality).  I want to find out more about young people who have a parent who have experienced unstable mood at one time in their life. I want to understand how they think, feel and cope with stress. I’m going to focus on anxiety or worry. This is because we think that anxiety is very closely linked to mood. I am interested to know whether you have ever felt stressed, anxious or worried and what happens when you do. I also want to find out whether feeling stressed, anxious or worried affects your mood. Finally, I want to know how your body copes with stress by measuring the body’s stress hormone, which is called cortisol.  Understanding how anxiety works in young people who have a family history of unstable mood, will help us to better understand what makes some people more likely to struggle. This will allow us to design better psychological treatments that can be offered earlier for people who are beginning to develop mood problems. We hope that this approach will prevent mood problems from starting at all and help people to manage their mental health better.

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