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🌳🔥🍄 As the nights draw in and the elves light the woodland campfire, there's more mental health research than ever to appraise for your delectation. Welcome to the October edition of The Mental Elf Monthly — our newsletter for mental health professionals, researchers, and policy people who care about making mental health evidence more useful and accessible.

Each month we bring you:

• The most popular Mental Elf blogs
• Research highlights from our community
• Updates on what we’re working on (and how you can get involved)

If you find this useful, please hit Subscribe, and feel free to share it with a colleague or two. We’ll keep it short, sharp, and relevant — no fluff, no hype, just helpful content.

📈 Top 5 blogs this month

These are the blogs that were most read and got everyone talking on social media:

1. Circle of Security under scrutiny: NHS trial finds no added benefit for perinatal mental health

A brilliant powerful and personal blog from our very own Laura Hemming, both academic and new mum, who unpacks the latest NHS trial of the Circle of Security parenting programme. Laura's reflections on evidence, experience, and emotions is a must-read for all parents and anyone working in perinatal mental health.

🤓 Read the BLOG

🗣️ Join the LinkedIn conversation​
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2. One more tool in the toolbox: an umbrella review of single-session interventions for mental health problems

Single-session interventions (SSIs) offer a brief, low-cost, scalable option to help bridge the treatment gap in mental health. It’s not about replacing multi-session therapy, but adding another layer of support that might reach people sooner. If you’re a clinician, policymaker or researcher: could SSIs play a role in your work?

🤓 Read the BLOG

🗣️ Join the LinkedIn conversation​
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3. From menstruation to menopause: how sex-steroids shape women’s mental health across the life course

In mental health, we need to start taking sex seriously. Women’s mental health has been sidelined for too long. Sex and gender differences in mental health are real and the mechanisms are under-explored. This review pulls together evidence on sex-steroids, brain development, neuroinflammation, and the social world to show where practice and policy must catch up.

🤓 Read the BLOG

🗣️ Join the LinkedIn conversation​
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4. Spotting the storm before it breaks: mapping the prodrome of severe mental illness

Can we stop severe mental illness in its tracks? This new study used machine learning and electronic clinical notes to map the early warning networks of symptoms across bipolar disorder, depression, and psychosis. Some of these features are directly intervenable, meaning action at this stage could prevent illness from worsening.

🤓 Read the BLOG

🗣️ Join the LinkedIn conversation​
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5. Painting prevention: How the arts promote health and tackle non-communicable diseases

Should we start seeing the arts as a core part of public health? This global review of 95 studies makes a powerful case: the arts are more than entertainment; they’re a health behaviour. They help prevent illness, improve wellbeing, and address social and structural inequalities. If you work in health, policy or research, this excellent blog by Lorna Collins is well worth 3 minutes of your time!

🤓 Read the BLOG

🗣️ Join the LinkedIn conversation

"Great webinar! Brilliant and informative!"

😍 Net Promoter Score = 9.5. We've never had feedback this good!

On 6th Oct we hosted a Difficult-To-Treat webinar for colleagues at King's College London. Aimed at clinicians, practitioners and policymakers, this hour-long free event featured short talks from experts in the field, who helped us all update our knowledge and think about next steps.

The feedback from participants was incredibly positive and 95% of attendees learned something new, that's likely to change their practice. That's #ElfHelp in practice! Providing accessible and engaging evidence summaries that can improve patient care.

Watch the webinar recording on YouTube and look out for future events on our Eventbrite!

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🌳🌤️🍄 Commission the Mental Elf to help share your research

We help researchers share evidence through social media, podcasts, videos, webinars and more. Right now we're working with research groups from London, Oxford, Bristol and Sheffield to disseminate their new research and maximise their reach and impact.

You can commission our expert team or write us into your next grant application as your dissemination partner.

🎗️ Contact us now and get yourself some #ElfHelp.

🔗 elfi.sh/help

📧 andre.tomlin@nationalelfservice.net

Digital Youth x MindTech, London 13th November 2025

How can we better support young people’s mental health in a digital world?

We're delighted that MindTech (NIHR HealthTech Research Centre Mental Health) have commissioned The Mental Elf to cover their conference in London, which brings together researchers, clinicians, innovators, young people and industry leaders to explore digital risk, resilience, and intervention in youth mental health.

Speakers include Amy Orben, Petr Slovak, Chris Hollis, Ellen Townsend, Edward Watkins, and Bernadka Dubicka.

We'll be recording video interviews that will be shared later in the year on our YouTube channel, and a team of Sprouting Minds young advisors will be reporting live on Bluesky and Instagram.

Tickets are available if you want to attend in person. Or search for #DigitalYouth on your social media platform of choice (unless it's X, in which case we recommend you consider moving).

📬 Want this newsletter in your inbox?

Never miss an update — especially if you’re interested in the latest blogs, research impact, #ElfHelp, or upcoming events.

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