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Recent studies suggest mental health in youths is deteriorating. The current policy in the United Kingdom emphasizes the role of schools for mental health promotion and prevention, but little data exist on what aspects of schools influence mental health in pupils. This study explored school-level influences on the mental health of young people in a large school-based sample from the United Kingdom.Baseline data from a large cluster randomized controlled trial collected between 2016 and 2018 from mainstream secondary schools selected to be representative in relation to their quality rating, size, deprivation, mixed or single-sex pupil population, and country were analyzed. Participants were pupils in their first or second year of secondary school. The study assessed whether school-level factors were associated with pupil mental health.The study included 26,885 pupils (response rate = 90%; age range, 11‒14 years; 55% female) attending 85 schools in the United Kingdom. Schools accounted for 2.4% (95% CI: 2.0%‒2.8%; p .0001) of the variation in psychopathology, 1.6% (95% CI: 1.2%‒2.1%; p .0001) of depression, and 1.4% (95% CI: 1.0%‒1.7%; p .0001) of well-being. Schools in urban locations, with a higher percentage of free school meals and of White British, were associated with poorer pupil mental health. A more positive school climate was associated with better mental health.School-level variables, primarily related to contextual factors, characteristics of pupil population, and school climate, explain a small but significant amount of variability in mental health of young people. This information might be used to identify schools that are in need of more resources to support mental health of young people.MYRIAD: My Resilience in Adolescence, a Study Examining the Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness of a Mindfulness Training Programme in Schools Compared With Normal School Provision; https://www.isrctn.com/; 86619085.

Highlights • One-in-five adolescents reported suicidality or pain. • Pain was associated with an increased risk of suicidality and vice versa (OR=4.00). • Network analysis supported the pain-suicidality association (aOR=1.39). • This cross-sectional association was not moderated by depression. • Pain should be considered as a key risk correlate of suicidality in adolescents., Background Whilst growing research suggests that pain is associated with suicidality in adolescence, it remains unclear whether this relationship is moderated by co-morbid depressive symptoms. The present study aimed to investigate whether the pain-suicidality association is moderated by depressive symptoms. Methods We performed secondary analyses on cross-sectional, pre-intervention data from the ‘My Resilience in Adolescence’ [MYRIAD] trial (ISRCTN ref: 86619085; N=8072, 11-15 years). Using odds ratio tests and (moderated) network analyses, we investigated the relationship between pain and suicidality, after controlling for depression, anxiety, inhibitory control deficits and peer problems. We investigated whether depression moderates this relationship and explored gender differences. Results Overall, 20% of adolescents reported suicidality and 22% reported pain, whilst nine percent of adolescents reported both. The experience of pain was associated with a four-fold increased risk of suicidality and vice versa (OR=4.00, 95%-CI=[3.54;4.51]), with no gender differences. This cross-sectional association remained significant after accounting for depression, anxiety, inhibitory control deficits and peer problems (aOR=1.39). Depression did not moderate the pain-suicidality association. Limitations The item-based, cross-sectional assessment of pain and suicidality precludes any conclusions about the direction of the effects and which aspects of suicidality and pain may drive this association. Conclusions Our findings underscore the need to consider pain as an independent risk correlate of suicidality in adolescents. Longitudinal research should examine how this relationship develops during adolescence. Clinically, our findings emphasise the need to assess and address suicidality in adolescents with pain, even in the absence of depressive symptoms.

People exhibit marked individual variation in their ability to exercise cognitive control in affectively-charged situations. Affective control is typically assessed in laboratory settings by comparing performance in carefully constructed executive tasks performed in both affectively neutral (‘cool’) and affectively-charged (‘hot’) contexts. Whilst there is some evidence that affective control undergoes significant improvement throughout adolescence, it is not clear if this follows a linear trajectory. Moreover, it is unclear how adolescents deemed at risk of developing depression exercise affective control despite poor affective control being identified as a contributing factor to ongoing mental ill-health in adulthood. The current study therefore investigated affective control in a large (n=425) sample of adolescents (aged 11-18 years). A visuospatial search and written storage Working Memory (WM) capacity task was carried out to examine affective control, using affectively-neutral and affectively-negative social images as the task-irrelevant distractors. Overall, WM capacity increased as a function of age across both affective conditions. Moreover, we report a significant difference between affective conditions, with WM capacity slightly lower during trials with affectively-negative social scenes, relative to neutral. The performance ‘cost’ for completing the task in negative relative to neutral conditions was not modulated by depressive risk. Furthermore, age did not predict performance cost, irrespective of risk group. These findings suggest WM capacity is relatively robust against socio-affective contexts and mood in adolescents.

Funder: Jacobs Foundation; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003986, Funder: Medical Research Council; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000265, Funder: University of Cambridge; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000735, Funder: Wellspring Foundation, Mindfulness training programmes have shown to encourage prosocial behaviours and reduce antisocial tendencies in adolescents. However, less is known about whether training affects susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence. The current study investigated the effect of mindfulness training (compared with an active control) on self-reported prosocial and antisocial tendencies and susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence. 465 adolescents aged 11-16 years were randomly allocated to one of two training programmes. Pre- and post-training, participants completed a social influence task. Self-reported likelihood of engaging in prosocial and antisocial behaviours did not change post-training, and regardless of training group, participants showed a higher propensity for prosocial influence than for antisocial influence. Finally, participants were less influenced by antisocial ratings following both training programmes.

Introduction Adolescents are particularly susceptible to social influence and previous studies have shown that this susceptibility decreases with age. The current study used a cross-sectional experimental paradigm to investigate the effect of age and puberty on susceptibility to both prosocial and antisocial influence. Methods Participants (N = 520) aged 11–18 from London and Cambridge (United Kingdom) rated how likely they would be to engage in a prosocial (e.g. “help a classmate with their work”) or antisocial (e.g. “make fun of a classmate”) act. They were then shown the average rating (in fact fictitious) that other adolescents had given to the same question, and were then asked to rate the same behaviour again. Results Both prosocial and antisocial influence decreased linearly with age, with younger adolescents being more socially influenced when other adolescents’ ratings were more prosocial and less antisocial than their own initial rating. Both antisocial and prosocial influence significantly decreased across puberty for boys but not girls (independent of age). Conclusions These findings suggest that social influence declines with increasing maturity across adolescence. However, the exact relationship between social influence and maturity is dependent on the nature of the social influence and gender. Understanding when adolescents are most susceptible to different types of social influence, and how this might influence their social behaviour, has important implications for understanding adolescent social development.

Existing non-verbal ability tests are typically protected by copyright, preventingthem from being freely adapted or computerized. Working towards an openscience framework, we provide 80 novel, open-access abstract reasoning items,an online implementation, and item-level data from 659 participants agedbetween 11 and 33 years: the Matrix Reasoning Item Bank (“MaRs-IB”). EachMaRs-IB item consists of an incomplete matrix containing abstract shapes.Participants complete matrices by identifying relationships between the shapes.Our data demonstrate age differences in non-verbal reasoning accuracy, whichincreased during adolescence and stabilized in early adulthood. There was aslight linear increase in response times with age, resulting in a peak in efficiency(i.e., a measure combining speed and accuracy) in late adolescence. Overall, thedata suggests that the MaRs-IB is sensitive to developmental differences inreasoning accuracy. Further psychometric validation is recommended.

Existing non-verbal ability tests are typically protected by copyright, preventing them from being freely adapted or computerized. Working towards an open science framework, we provide 80 novel, open-access abstract reasoning items, an online implementation and item-level data from 659 participants aged between 11 and 33 years: the matrix reasoning item bank (MaRs-IB). Each MaRs-IB item consists of an incomplete matrix containing abstract shapes. Participants complete the matrices by identifying relationships between the shapes. Our data demonstrate age differences in non-verbal reasoning accuracy, which increased during adolescence and stabilized in early adulthood. There was a slight linear increase in response times with age, resulting in a peak in efficiency (i.e. a measure combining speed and accuracy) in late adolescence. Overall, the data suggest that the MaRs-IB is sensitive to developmental differences in reasoning accuracy. Further psychometric validation is recommended.