King's College London

This is a Wellcome Trust funded project exploring parent beliefs and concerns around mental health in families. Funding was awarded to Professor Tom McAdams’ team in partnership with Bethlem Gallery (art gallery based at Bethlem Royal Hospital) and Centre for Mental Health (a charity driving change in mental health policy and practice, with extensive experience in public engagement and patient and public involvement). The project is supported by a steering committee of 10 experts from academic, charity, gallery, arts, wellbeing, clinical and community sectors, who meet biannually to discuss plans and progress.

• Increase public engagement and understanding around family mental health research – focussing on links between parent and child mental health.
• Create a mental health dialogue between researchers and parents – give parents the opportunity to learn from scientists and to influence the direction of future research (outcomes for the public and researchers).

Target audience

• Current and prospective parents with questions about how mental health problems can run in families, and what can be done about it.
• Underrepresented groups. Existing research often fails to capture diversity of lived experiences within mental health, parenting, and child development across demographic groups. We aim to address this inequality by engaging with people who identify with groups typically underrepresented in our research.

Project activities

1. Consultation with fathers and mothers of children (from newborns to teenagers) through a series of workshops in collaboration with artist Amber Roper, to collect ideas and perspectives for research on the topic of how mental health problems can run in families.
2. Online survey with ~400 fathers and mothers of children (from newborns to teenagers), based on our initial consultation workshops, to help us refine a 10 top questions for scientists, to produce research that is meaningful and valuable for the public, on the topic of how mental health problems can run in families. Parents can take part here .
3. Artistic outputs by Amber Roper at Bethlem Gallery, reflecting on parents' conversations and outputs from the workshops.
4. Disseminating our Top 10 Questions to researchers, clinicians, funders and policy makers, to ensure that parents’ priorities are understood and focussed on in future work designed to better support family mental health and wellbeing.
5. Myth busting for parents with Centre for Mental Health, sharing available up-to-date research to answer questions raised by parents.

Progress update

(January 2026)

48 parents took part in creative discussion workshops. Artist, Amber Roper, and Researcher, Dr Yasmin Ahmadzadeh, met with parents at the Science Gallery and Bethlem Gallery for discussions about family mental health and where more research is needed.

Amber supported everyone to weave picture frames for family photos. This creative activity was designed to aid space for reflection and dialogue to share lived experiences of mental health.

External evaluation of the workshops by the company tialt concluded that parents felt comfortable engaging in dialogue through creative facilitation to discuss lived experiences of mental health. The workshop environments were described as therapeutically supportive, non-judgemental, and relaxed.

^{“I learned a lot during the session, particularly about generational mental health. It wasn’t just about the issues between me and my daughter, but also about experiences with my mother. Some people in the group had similar experiences and shared feelings of shame, fear, and loneliness about their situations. While some may have felt these emotions more intensely than I did at first, I found it really valuable to see and share experiences. It was comforting to know that others feel the same way and have similar thoughts.” – Participating parent}

 ^{“I really loved the creative aspect, I've not really done anything like that before, and it took the pressure off needing to talk all the time. There was a little booklet that they gave to us with some prompts to look at. I found that bit quite helpful and quite moving, because it helped me engage with some of my feelings around my daughter and husband.” – Participating parent}

 ^{“I didn't think I would share that much actually, it is hard with strangers. At first, I was just observing, listening, and seeing the way some people didn't hold back about what they had been through. It made me feel like saying something too, so it was like we're building that trust process. But at the same time, even though we haven't met each other before, they made things feel welcoming. The artist was really good and making something as we were chatting helped i think. She's a parent as well and knew what we have experienced. It made it feel real and the fact that the experience is real for everyone in that room got us talking, and we're not holding back, it was like a little community.” – Participating parent}

Following the creative workshops:

• Over 100 research questions were generated to guide future research.
• One survey has been developed to help refine parents’ priorities for research.

Calling all parents – complete our survey

Open until 1^st April 2026, with a cash prize draw.

If you have parental responsibility for a child, you can share valuable insight to help us prioritise which research topics need attention in relation to family mental health.

It only takes 5 – 20 minutes to take part:

• Step 1: Click here to access the survey: https://qualtrics.kcl.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_0DNYeAKwUw7wHLo
• Step 2: Choose themes that interest you most
• Step 3: Rate how important each topic is to you, within each theme.
• Step 4: Enter our cash prize draw.

We will randomly select 8 winners for 2 x £100 and 6 x £50 Love2Shop vouchers.

Coming soon to this page!

…Artistic Outputs – see the results

…Top 10 Research Priorities – for researchers, clinicians, funders and policy makers

…Myth busting content – we answer parents' questions

This project is funded by Wellcome.