About the group
Psychosocial difficulties are widespread across society. They include challenges that affect both a person’s psychological wellbeing and their social functioning, often with consequences for those around them. In children and adolescents, they can take the form of emotional problems such as anxiety or depression, behavioural issues like aggression or rule-breaking, and social struggles such as peer victimisation. Because they affect not only day-to-day wellbeing but also education, health, and long-term life chances, psychosocial difficulties are an important target for research and prevention.
The Behavioural, Emotional, and Social Difficulties (BESD) group brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers and PhD students dedicated to understanding how children and adolescents experience and cope with psychosocial difficulties. Our work explores the diverse factors that contribute to these challenges – from individual vulnerabilities and family dynamics to broader community and systemic influences, as well as highlighting the strengths, resilience, and resources surrounding the youth and their family. We aim to produce high-quality conceptual and empirical work that is directly relevant to practitioners and policymakers.
BESD group members come from diverse backgrounds, including pedagogy, psychology, and the social and behavioural sciences. Members work extensively with qualitative, cohort, survey, and registry data to generate robust evidence on risk and resilience factors. We also design and conduct intervention studies targeting at-risk populations and develop and validate tools to better assess and refine these programmes. We frequently partner with schools, mental health services, and community organisations to ensure that research outputs are most relevant for children and young people facing emotional and social difficulties.
