SMART Lab (Study of Maladaptive to Adaptive Repetitive Thought)

SMART Lab (Study of Maladaptive to Adaptive Repetitive Thought) is focused on the understanding of the mechanisms of worry and rumination, identified as mechanisms common across multiple disorders, the translation of this understanding into better interventions to treat and prevent disorders characterized by repetitive negative thought such as depression and anxiety, and the increased access and dissemination of these interventions.

Key Strands

Rumination and worry - their mechanism and treatment
Improving mental health in young people including university students
Treatment and prevention of anxiety and depression
Research into understanding the active ingredients of rumination-focused CBT (RFCBT) and Behavioural Activation.

There is good evidence for RFCBT treating chronic treatment-refractory depression and for preventing depression and anxiety. Projects investigating RFCBT includes trials investigating whether it prevents anxiety and depression in at risk UK undergraduates, as a treatment for severe adult depression in Denmark, as an intervention to prevent depression and anxiety in Swedish and US adolescents, and as a community wide prevention intervention in Hong Kong

SMART lab Lead: Professor Ed Watkins

Key Team Members

Postdoctoral researchers:

Dr Sabrina Meechem
Dr Meechem has research interests in various aspects of improving mental health, specifically early intervention and with adolescents, with a focus on qualitative methods.

Dr Henrietta Roberts
Dr Roberts is interested in the cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms by which young people learn to ruminate or worry, and the factors that maintain repetitive negative thought (rumination and worry) during adulthood.

Dr Katie Wood
Dr Wood’s interests are broadly focussed on rumination, anxiety, PTSD, habits and goal directed behaviour, and the elements which influence this.

Research Project Manager:

Martin Howard

PhD student:

Sarah Coles

DClinPsy PGR students:

Anna Perry
Beatriz Perez Gonzalez

Projects

NurtureU University Mental Health Study

NurtureU is a 4-year £4million flagship MRC/AHRC/ESRC funded grant within the Adolescence, Mental Health and Developing Minds scheme focused on understanding and improving university student mental health. The project involves the Universities of Exeter, Oxford, Southampton, Newcastle, Cardiff, and King’s College London.

Wellcome Trust Grant

We have been funded by the Wellcome Trust for a large-scale six-year programme to investigate the active ingredients of CBT to reduce worry and rumination, as part of their recent Mental Health call on Looking Backwards to Move Forwards. This research will enable us to further enhance interventions for these transdiagnostic processes and thereby improve prevention and treatment across mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and psychosis.

RuME Change Trial

An ongoing US NIMH funded trial (in collaboration with the University of Utah and Ohio State University) is examining whether RFCBT is effective at preventing relapse into depression for adolescents with a history of depression (the RuMeChange trial).

Mood Disorders stream of the NIHR Mental Health Mission

The Mental Health Mission (MHM) has been launched with £42m of government funding. The MHM will work to increase the amount of mental health research being conducted in the UK by providing training and developing better systems to support industry-led and NHS-led research and investment. The project will also focus on key areas of mental illness that have unmet patient need or carry a high burden – this funding focuses on the development and extension of research clinics and innovative treatments for depression.

ECoWeB (Emotional Competence and Wellbeing in Young People)

This Horizon2020 grant (Professor Watkins, lead applicant) sought to investigate emotions and the role of emotional competence skills in the maintenance of well-being and tested whether a scalable self-help mental health app can promote well-being and prevent poor mental health in young people across UK, Germany, Spain and Belgium. This study has now completed and the study results have been submitted for publication.