[THEME MUSIC PLAYING] We are the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, or ACAMH for short. And this is ACAMH learn. Seeking autonomy and social connection. Risk taking and identity making. The brain and adolescence is unique. It's primed to absorb and learn from the environment. And that means the teenage years are a chance to shift a young person's trajectory. This new series of inside the teen brain explores how neuroscience can inform our understanding of young people's home, school, and life experience. In conversation with leading professionals, we answer three big questions, what's the background, so what, and now what? I'm Dr. Jane Gilmore and this episode is called bullied the teenage brain under threat. Well, now our first big question asks, what's the background? How do we draw the line between banter and bullying? Well, Dan Ulvaeus' classic definition of bullying describes repeated interactions intending harm where there's a power differential between perpetrator and victim. A clearly operationalized definition is important because young people who do experience bullying are more likely to have poorer mental health, social adjustment, and lower academic achievement. Estimates suggest up to 35% of young people are bullied at some time. Although there's a dose-dependent outcome, the more severe and frequent the bullying, the poorer the outcome is likely to be. So what are the implications for adolescents specifically, given their vulnerable stage of development? We know that their brains are highly attuned to social inclusion and sensitive to status. Strong data from self-report and MRI studies show that being socially outcast matters more to young people post puberty. This suggests that in adolescence, bullying may have a higher emotional cost. We know too, that adolescents tend to find and inhabit specific roles in their social group, and these roles may in some cases form part of their identity. What are the implications if a young person finds themselves in a victim role during this critical period of development? There's some complexity to this picture, though. The same individuals may be both a perpetrator and be bullied themselves, and these so-called bully victims have the poorest outcome of all. But the literature is often muddled and fails to differentiate this group, so the full picture may be more complex. Stereotypically, at least, teenagers don't venture far from their phone. So what about cyberbullying? And though there are more similarities than differences between real world and online bullying, there are defining aspects of cyberbullying which may prove meaningful. It's omnipresent. The interaction could be replayed countless times the number of witnesses could be vast, and the perpetrator might be anonymous. It's likely no accident that for our socially-driven young people. Interventions Levering the influence of the bystander and the community are most effective. Gaffney's influential review show some whole school programmes result in a moderate effect size, decreasing the number of bullying events by 20%. Within the parameters of our discipline, this is impressive, but where do we go from here? So let's get to the next big question and ask so what? So what should we do next? Well, here I'm delighted to offer a warm welcome to Mairéad Foody, assistant professor of psychology at University Galway in Ireland and award-winning researcher. Her special interest is the impact of bullying on young people's development. Thank you for joining Mairéad. Thanks, Jane. Nice to be here. I need some expert help here. There's a lot to unpack. Would you agree with my hypothesis that bullying in the teenage years might be more impactful because of the unique attributes of that stage in life? Yeah, I don't know if I would go that straightforward to say that there's more of an impact if bullying happens in the adolescent years, because I'm presuming you're saying in comparison to any other stage in life. So I think there's that all of the things that are very specific to the adolescent stage, you've mentioned, striving for popularity, peer relations being very important. There's a move to be more autonomous. They get more time alone. There's lots of reasons why we could explain both the impact and maybe the change in bullying style for adolescents, but I think regardless of the stage in life, the impact is very, very significant. So if it's in primary school or if it's in adult life, it can have a really, debilitating effect on an individual. As well as that, I know that you mentioned, we have about 30% of people maybe who might be a victim at some point in the school, in their school experiences, primary or secondary, but there's a lot of individuals who remain a victim from primary and secondary, too. So you do have a higher-risk group of people who just seem to have the experience of victimisation at different points in their life, for whatever reason. These kind of remaining victims or people who for some reason are caught in a web of violence throughout their life. And they're going to be, someone that we shouldn't forget about. I suppose when we say, oh, it's more important if it happens in the adolescent stage. So I'm afraid to say, yes, it is more impactful. I wouldn't say more, but absolutely, we have a few things that happen at that point that can explain maybe why peer relations are more important and could potentially, could potentially explain some of the reasons why it might have an impact. And those young people that you described who experienced bullying in their primary school, and it follows them into secondary school, into their teenage years, they're also getting a higher dose, if you like. We talked about the dose-dependent experience because it is a longer experience. So are there data to show that the outcome in these particular young people is poorer? Are there ways of describing that? For exactly the same reason that you said this kind of dose, this kind of chronic dose. So the more you're exposed to it, obviously the more impact there's going to be on your mental health. And then for some reason, there might be something about their friendships or their peer relations that has led them to peer rejection, even if it's not a case of that they're actually bullied. But for some reason, their role in the friendship group or in the classroom is one that always puts them in that kind of peer rejection space, which, even if they're not bullied, they might have sense of loneliness. They might have just poor social skills for some reason. And it's not always easily explained in the literature because it's so nuanced. But being low on likeability or low on popularity, even if you're not bullied, can have an impact as well on your mental health. So if that's something that you've experienced all through your school years. It's going to have more of an impact again around how you view school. If you met your potential in school, your academic achievement, if you don't have good friends, it's not going to be an enjoyable place to be. So I think there's a lot of ways why we might explain it or potential ways to look at it. But there is this kind of specific group of people who seem to be remaining victims as well even after our bullying rates in schools might go down with an intervention, for example. But there still seems to be this continuous impact on their mental health and their mental well-being. The way you're describing these data suggests to me that for some young people, there are some traits, if you like, inherent in them, that may make them more vulnerable to being bullied. And that even if they're not being bullied, their experience of loneliness will make them vulnerable as well. So really, would that be a fair way of reading the literature, do you think? I think it's probably fair in the way that I just explained the last. But I would be so reluctant to say that because I mean, I think one of the problems that we've had in how we've investigated bullying is that we've tried to put it down to these individual traits, or it's maybe because a victim has this sensitivity or has there's something about them that makes them more prone to it, or there's something about a bully that makes a bully more aggressive. And we have, the literature is quite clear now that doesn't help us if we're trying. Looking at it in this very individualistic way is not what we want to do if we're thinking about how to prevent bullying or how to limit the impact or how to reduce the rates of it in our schools, because we know that it is a social phenomena ultimately. So maybe things like loneliness, peer rejection could come down to individual traits, and that then sets you up for the social phenomena of bullying. So I think there's a mixture, individual factors, but also it has to be allowed to happen in this kind of environment that the school environment or the classroom or the schoolyard, for example, or the internet. There has to be something that allows it to happen. There's a few reasons why the group process and all the other characters that are in that group, the people who see the bullying, the people who defend the victim, the people who hang around with the bully, all of those are important in the hole in the bullying experience. And I want to talk about, maybe now is a good time to talk about that in terms of intervention, because you I mean, and I'm really struck by what you said about identifying these characteristics, if you like, of young people who are more likely to be bullied actually doesn't lead us anywhere. So, for example, if you have a learning difference, you're more likely to be bullied. Well, that doesn't show what our intervention, where our intervention should go. But what you're describing is the context is where we've got some leverage here. So what does the evidence-based talk tell us about interventions? And maybe there's two aspects to this both targeted interventions and whole-school intervention. Yeah. So I think first of all, your point, which you said at the beginning, we have I think the meta analysis that you mentioned showed that with our current anti-bullying interventions. We might see if you run them well with fidelity, about a 20% rate, decrease in bullying rates in a school say. But people who have developed very successful, and the most successful of this is the key anti-bullying programme, which was developed by Christina Salmivalli in Finland and her colleagues. Even she would say that the reduction is modest and some of these anti-bullying prevention programmes are actually quite weak. There's still a lot of people who remain to suffer. So there's the blanket kind of anti-bullying intervention, which is usually about prevention. So how do we prevent it? How do we try to build a culture in our school that prevents bullying from happening? And then there's more individualist kind of interventions where maybe you might target people who have experienced bullying. You might target people who are identified as bullies. And then if they fail, you might get to a point where your other parties are involved and it's getting a little bit serious. And there's more individualistic ways of dealing with it depending on people's circumstances. But after that still have, and there's a couple of papers that have came out recently from that same research group. Christina Salmivalli research group in Finland, that show you have still quite a high percentage of people that they're calling remaining victims. So they're calling that the healthy-context paradox. And it's very interesting because what they've found over years of research where they've investigated the cava anti-bullying programme, is that there are still victims, despite decreasing bullying rates in schools with positive and strong anti-bullying interventions, there are still victims who actually are worse off after reduction in bullying rates. And they're called, the remaining victims, and they're actually doing worse. And there's a couple of different ways that they've explained it or there's potential theories, but we're not really sure. And one of the theories is that it helps to have other victims in your class because you can be friends with those people. And if you're the only person who's still victimised or still has this experience, whereas everyone else it seems to be talked about, it's the teachers are tuned in, everybody's aware of it, and we've seen and it looks like it's worked. But I'm still getting harassed and victimised in school, it's even worse than in terms of your mental health and that sense of isolation and loneliness that we talked about. I mean, that's a fascinating observation. And it really plays to some of the debates in the literature in general about whole school interventions and about the potential impact that may have and that for some individuals, whole school interventions, let's say, about well-being, for example, that's discussed in the literature, may actually have, that the outcome may be poorer. So it's a very interesting debate that absolutely plays in lots of different areas. What about can you say a little bit about prevention. How is the context set up in the best prevention programmes? So that particular the key of anti-bullying prevention programme has I think I mean there's a lot in there. But I think if I was to nail it down, there's three important factors that a lot of bullying intervention programmes do keep. So one would be this idea of working with defenders, so trying to encourage people who might be bystanders, who might witness bullying to actually not always intervene because we know that can sometimes be difficult or it can actually result in bullying for the person. So we don't always ask young people to intervene, but that they would somehow show that they don't agree with it, that they might come to the victim afterwards, that they would do something to say, look, this isn't OK with me. And that's a big move. That's very important. Move where you can just somehow let the victim know or the target even if it's not immediately that you didn't like what they saw, that can have a massive impact for the person who's the target of the bullying. And it also drains the social power from the interaction for the person-- Who's carrying out the bullying. It's important. And that's important then for the peer group, for also the culture in the school. So it's actually not something that's viewed as positive among your friends, you might be less likely to do it. Because bullies are typically striving for popularity. They usually have it. They're not always liked, but they're usually popular. So if you can take that popularity or that sense of power out of it, somehow, they might be they're typically it does transfer to reduce bullying rates. That's one element that's important. The other might be just encouraging things like empathy. Then for the victim, empathy is really important for and it does come into a lot of the different other kind of whole-school approaches that we see in schools now. So building empathy for people, understanding what it is, and it feeds exactly into what we just talked about in terms of trying to be a good bystander. And then usually teacher awareness is another element. So teacher awareness we know that there's a kind of a misalignment with the rate of bullying that students will report in schools versus what an adult like a teacher, or even less so a principal will. So there's something happening there where the teachers are either not aware or not tuned in to the nuances of what bullying is. So they need to be given the appropriate tools to deal with it. It's not always something that they know how to deal with. Sometimes, especially when you think about cyberbullying, it's not always something that they feel that they can deal with or that it's even within their remit. So that kind of sense of empathy building, defender promoting and then also teacher awareness, these three things. If I can just think I know they all have different interventions, have lots of really good stuff, but I think those three would be the most impactful. One of the most powerful things about that is it leads towards a solution, and it leads towards a community that has action points that will decrease the chances of bullying catching hold, if you like, in a community, and it's very much pleased to the idea of the power of the teenage brain, if you like. If there is somebody or at least a critical mass of young people who won't give the bullying behaviour any social applause, that is probably one of the most powerful things that can happen in terms of pulling a young person towards positive behaviour. That, and I was really struck by the sociometry of somebody who carries out bullying behaviour, being powerful but not liked, or popular but not liked. Yeah, that is interesting. And again, it goes back to maybe what it is that teenagers are seeking from their peer group. And popularity for some reason is important. There's lots of we know there's lots of reasons why they're seeking popularity. And the flip side of that then is peer rejection can set you up to be victimised or victimizer to be just somebody that you're not going to develop friendships in the same way potentially. And friendships are so, so important for our young people. So it is very nuanced and it is really interesting that the popular people, usually kids, are the ones that you want to maybe hang out with and be around, but they're not people you like. It's very strange. But these but these sort of social codes that teenagers are tuned into in a way that they never, never have been before, never will again. And sometimes I say, in a clinical practise, I say to parents, the reason that young people are so interested in their peer perception and integrating into peers is because they're figuring out the rules of their future community. Because you better be included by your future community, or you may be in danger, as a bottom line, simplistic way of describing it. And so knowing what is acceptable, what's appropriate, and really being interested in that is a very smart move of the teenage brain. You touched on friendships and one to one friendships or didactic friendships. Can you talk a little bit about, because I know this is something you've written about, about the potential buffering effect that a good quality one-to-one friendship might have in the context of experiencing bullying? Yeah. So there is quite a lot of literature on the effects of friendship just in general and positive development. But that there is a sense that it will buffer the negative, the impact, for example. So there's a few reasons why friendships are important for this in the sense of bullying or in the context of bullying. So one would be that it can't. So it might not exactly reduce or somehow decrease the amount of bullying that you might experience, but it might be something that will help you get through it. So having a good friend, it reduces the sense of loneliness, and it means that maybe you can share your feelings, your thoughts with somebody, and then you might have a less severe or you might have there might be less of an impact on your mental health. The other thing is that, then the other side, like we said, it means that you might. You don't have potentially. If you have good friendships, you don't-- You're not in this kind of peer-rejection, loneliness category. So there's also in that you have all of the good things that go with that. You don't have to maybe worry as much about trying to make friends or trying to figure it out. And school experience might be a good and a positive one. And then there's also we said, the strange new phenomena when we know about people who remain victims, is that sometimes if you are the victim of bullying, your other friends are also the victim of maybe the same bully or bullying as well. And that creates this kind of sense again, of camaraderie a feeling that you're in it together and that you can get through it a little bit easier because you're stronger together, rather than going through it on your own. So there's a few reasons why friendships are important, and some of them sound actually a little bit almost negative in a way because you don't want more people to be victimised. But it is a lot easier to go to school if you're not the only one. And yeah, we did, we had published a paper where we were able to show, just even with cross-sectional data, that friendships do seem to buffer. There seems to be something in them that mean that there's less of an impact your mental health when it comes to the experience of being a victim. And it makes me think a little bit about the resilience literature as well, the idea that these social relationships allow us to navigate some of the challenges we have in life. And this is something, again, that if I had a penny for every time a parent or a teacher said to me, how can I give this young person resilience, I would be a very rich person because it is described as a thing. And also there's a debate in the literature. So it's either described as a personal quality or something that I have inherent in me or that environmental quality. Anne Marsden brilliantly describes that network and social attachment as ordinary magic. Oh, brilliant. And I love that phrase. I think it's fantastic. First of all, how do we make sense of what resilience means? And can we use resilience in inverted commas to improve the outcome for young people? You're sort of hinting at it with those one-to-one friendships and the social network that they're making there. I think resilience is it's a term I try to keep away from too, for lots of the reasons that you explained. So sometimes I think it's a little bit easier and maybe it's a bit of a cheat for me, but I come at it in terms of coping. So we know that how a child copes with it is important. And so if they're more likely to seek out an adult to tell them what's happened, a friend to talk about how they're feeling, then they're going to do a lot better than if they are going to just avoid school or abuse alcohol or abuse drugs or you mentioned in the beginning, lash out and be angry and maybe then also bully other people as a way to process the experience or deal with how they're feeling. So what I try, if I have that question from parents, which sometimes we do where teachers, I just say, well, let's talk about how they're coping with it. Like, what are they doing to help process the thoughts that they're having about maybe feeling lonely, feeling low, feeling like a failure, feeling like a pariah, whatever it is. What did they do? And how can we set it up that they can have positive coping strategies rather than the negative ones, which we know can then create more problems within themselves. So I think positive social attachments, encouraging friendships, having strong adults that good role models or teachers that they can reach out to knowing where to go. In schools where we have very clear anti-bullying policies with very clear procedure, you will see that students know who to go to and what to do if they're ready to talk about it. Whereas in some schools, if it's not on the radar, they don't even know where to start. So having-- schools can do a lot and just having a clear procedure, clear process, making sure they know what to do if they're ready to reach out and look for support when they need it. And that makes sense in so many contexts. So if I'm in crisis, I don't need to navigate and find out my help spots because they've already been laid out for me when things were calm. So the idea that there's a real clear roadmap of if you're in trouble, go to B, and C, so that when I'm in crisis, I don't have to have any other additional reasoning or additional demand on me, I guess. You touched on the idea of the bully victim, so-called in the literature. These young people have both experienced bullying and have perhaps carried out activity that would be described as bullying, to they are understood as being at the greatest risk of a poor outcome. Can you talk a little bit about the reasons for that? Yeah, so the reasons aren't so clear cut. I wish I could tell you what, exactly why. I just can't. So, yeah, basically what we mean by the bully victim are these young people who have been identified as victims, but they're also identified as bullies. And so it's hard to know which one is coming first. I like the way that I talked about it. I was saying that it's potentially a way of coping with a victimised experience is that they're going off and then being aggressive or processing it and what they've seen happen to them, maybe trying to somehow get their control or their power back by doing this someone else. But I think that's very simplistic. I think there's a lot more we need to look at really-- Back to coping. Like why is aggressive behaviour a way of coping? So I think there's a lot of reasons why aggression might be the go-to strategy for some people in ways of dealing with stressful situations. And that comes back to what's happening in the family unit, what's happening in the neighbourhood that they're growing up in, what has been allowed or they've seen work in the school that they're going to. So maybe they've seen, well, that person is popular even though he's hurting people when he goes outside for whatever reason. And if that's allowed to happen in the school environment or in other environments, it might be something that they want. They want to get a popularity. So even if they can't exactly stop being a victim, they can maybe try and get it in another way. Now, there is a lot. I think that's kind of a simplistic description. I think there's for those individuals. There's the reason it's such a high impact is you have these internalising difficulties that they're more likely to have. So anxiety, depression possible like mental ill health possibilities. But then they also seem to be at higher risk for conduct problems, getting in trouble in school, getting in trouble with the law school, early school, leaving, also leaving school or skipping school. So it could be again, back to how they're dealing with, the experiences that they're having and that the way that their coping strategies are just leading them into this cycle, which means that the impact is going to be even more significant than somebody who hasn't had has so much aggression in their life, if that makes sense. I mean, that's very I mean, and you paint a complex picture. So the idea of having same outcome that somebody who is just in inverted commas, bullied, but also some of the difficulties that those young people who are showing the bullying behaviour have, they have them both. And it would make sense in some ways that is a complicated background and a complicated outcome. Let's talk about cyberbullying for a moment. So we know that reports of cyberbullying have increased. And I touched on the idea that cyber and real world bullying are often similar and target the same population, if you like. But can you talk a little bit about what impact cyberbullying might have? Are there any differences in those outcomes? And I recognise here that we may not have longitudinal data yet. So some of it's conjecture potentially. But what would your comment be on that? So I think for a long time, even the way we researched cyberbullying, we did distinguish it from bullying like traditional or offline bullying. And I've come since to think that might be a little bit of a mistake. And the whole I think a lot of the other people who are researching in this area do we for simplicity, we might call it something different, but we do know that for a lot of people who are cyberbullied, it's linked to something that's happening in their one to, in their real world. And usually it will be an incident that's kind of filtered that's came from the offline world into the online or the other way around. It's like this fluid experience. So it doesn't-- And our young people don't typically view it as, this is my online cyber world and this is offline. So offline, so it always help for us to do that. But when we do, we still know that there is increased rates or it seems to be something that's happening more and more like you mentioned. But the important thing to remember is that offline bullying is actually happening more and not going away. But what is a bit unique about the cyberbullying experience is that for the person who is targeted, you have this sense of isolation I think is so much more. I can't think of any more of a strong enough word to describe how scary that experience is for somebody to know that something that they're probably embarrassed about has been, is on the internet, can be seen by everybody in their world, their teachers, their parents, their friends, everybody, and not having a sense of control over where that then goes or when you can take it down or can. So this sense of the repetition is the bit that's a bit it's unique, it's there. But it's also a repetition in that they have to relive the experience of the victimisation experience more than if it was something that happened without that possibility with traditional bullying. So even though there's maybe less cyberbullying, for example, the impact seems to be a little bit more intense for young people when it's online. And like I said, the lack of control that they have of making it stop or ending it. I think is very significant. And, you make some very important points in that the idea that for young people online and offline is not the differentiation that old people make, that is their life, but also the idea of the social experience of seeing that bullying event. Let's say if I was the victim of that. In such an invasive way, in my safe place, if you like, at home and by myself, which is typically one of I think one of the greatest problems we have with phones is it's viewed in isolation. So we don't get the opportunity to correct or discuss in the way we might with other forms of potentially dangerous material. So it's a very impactful experience for a variety of social reasons. It's very important. One of the papers that we published when we were looking at intimate image sharing, show that I'm not sure if things have maybe changed a little bit because it was in I think it was 2018 that we published that paper. But we know that young people, when something happens to them, like an image of themselves being shared without their consent, for example, or they've seen something online that they're just that they're worried about or they're scared about. We know that they don't come to adults. They don't come to us and tell us that they don't come and say, look, there's a picture of me on online. They might tell a friend, but they will, for the most part, deal with that on their own. And that's a really scary finding and it can be a hard thing to go and tell a parent or a teacher that you've been the victim of a cyber crime, for example, or cyberbullying, because you have to then say, well, I did this thing in the first place. If it was an image or if it was something that you did offline, say. And it's a little bit it's very hard for parents maybe to not blame them or we have a lot of victim blaming where we just think, well, they shouldn't have done it in the first place, which is really not helpful at all. So really, for, in terms of helping the person, the target of those experiences, we really do need everybody to weigh in behind them and be very strong for them and try to help, take away that sense of isolation. Unless you share that, they're going to deal with that on their own. And I think that's why for some very significant cases, we have such really detrimental and sad outcomes, because they might have had to deal with that all on their own. And it really makes me think again about the culture that we offer our young people. So if you bring your mistakes home, right. I'm not agreeing with necessarily what you've done, but I want to hear what's happened so that we can look at it together is a sort of attitude that should be embedded in families if we can. Because for that very reason, a young person, maybe they were doing something that they shouldn't have done or their parents said, don't go on that platform, and they did. And that silences them. But actually, if there was a sense of a culture at home or at school, when something goes wrong on the internet, come and show me and we'll figure it out together. When you make a mistake, come and tell me. And this is not about approving of something that's gone wrong. It's about figuring it out together. But that is a sort of a prerequisite. It's a necessary but not sufficient intervention. But it's a really important point, because the idea of being isolated and trying to manage that impossible situation alone, without any social network coming back to that idea that, unmasked and raises, without managing an aversive event, without social support, is something that is incredibly I think we definitely have to do what you said at the family level. But I also think that we need to do we need to have conversations at a broader level where we're reminding people it is not OK all the time. Like, did you share the image of someone, even if it's not an intimate image. When you even, I think we should be it's a culture we create within our family, but it's also something we create ourselves within our friends group, friendship groups, even as adults. When you in a WhatsApp group, you get a video or a picture of someone that you might not but you're like, why is this in here? You know, nobody ever says, please don't put that sometimes, but we don't have it enough where it's like, I don't want to receive videos or pictures of stuff that isn't related to this or share images so readily. And it's something I always say. Can we just stop doing that. Can we just not share them. And it's our unless our teenagers see us doing that and asking people for their consent to share an image, they're not going to do it. So in fact, they do it a lot more. I think they're a lot more tuned into that than we are. So I do think apart from the family unit, having that conversation about, look, if something's happened, you can come to me. It also should be don't share images, don't share videos. Not don't take them. That's a little bit of a different conversation. But don't like something. If you like it, then you've participated in a cyberbullying event. It's on you too. It's on all of us. Again, bringing in that sense of the group, the bystanders, we are all taking part in it if we've seen it or shared it or liked it. I mean, and I think creating that cultural context is, as you say, it sets the value system and it should be a societal discussion as well as well. Before leaving cyberbullying, I just wanted to pick up on a really important point that you made. Is that sometimes and this is true for lots of discussions about phones, tech and social media is that it is somehow hijacks a broader issue or an underlying issue. And you noted that the bullying behaviour happens in the real world. That's not going away. So we mustn't get distracted, if you like, by the idea of cyberbullying being the main issue, because that would be doing our young people a disservice. And I think sometimes that does happen. So it's a really important point you made. So thank you for raising it in the context of cyberbullying. We've talked a lot about young people making mistakes, and we've talked here about how we find a way back from mistakes. And one of my favourite questions, if you like, is about one of your favourite mistakes. Because we always learn from things that go wrong in a way that we might not in when things go right. So can you talk about your favourite mistake. It can be at work or outside work. And what did you learn from it? When I did my PhD, I did it in the area of acceptance and commitment therapy. And then after that, I tried to get a postdoc in that area. And I was going to say that my mistake at the time where I felt was my mistake, was just that I couldn't get something-- I couldn't get an academic job linked to that area that I really, really wanted to work in. And I ended up at the time moving abroad with my husband, who was my husband at the time. But he is now. And I took a job to work in a school. And I really thought that, I can't believe I haven't got a postdoc or I took the next step and it was just a really hard time because I wasn't sure what I was doing. And I ended up working with children and I absolutely loved it. And it really set the stage for my whole research area now, because I really got to see the really sad impact of social problems, social networks going wrong, but also it made me realise that there's a lot that we can do and how malleable and fun kids are, and that really we can change. We really, really can make an impact if we get it right. We just have to listen to them. So I think my favourite mistake was just the mistake of not getting the job that I really wanted to get at the time and just going with it and then building out really more of an area that suits me and that I really love. As a result, and I hope that's not too new. But that's brilliant. But because I also think it shows in the way that you inhabit your specialism, because I think the idea that you saw it in the here and now, and that inspired you to look at it in an academic way, I think that really comes through in the way you explore it and the way you investigate it. So I think that's a brilliant favourite mistake. Let's turn and ask our final now what question. So here I'd like a practical tip. Something that might improve academic practise or the debate in the literature. What would you tell us? So yeah, I think for academic practise, one thing that I've been telling my students more and more now practically with AI and maybe just also this the emphasis that we have on quick publishing and publishing. So what I've been trying to pull back from is quick, fast papers. And I think we should be talking about this as academics that we need to build in time for discussion and really theory and getting in deeper when we're building out a project or when we have results back. And what I've noticed in the papers that I read that I can tell, when people have really done this, and I'm really starting to appreciate those academics who have gotten so deep into an area and really thought about what it is that's driving the results that they have. Because that's then they're finding things like, for example, the thing that we talked about earlier, the healthy context paradox, and it's really getting into the nuts and bolts of the social relationships. For teenagers and knowing what it is, these people that are still stuck after years of intervention means we can target them and help them. So I think as an academic tip, it's can we just think a little bit more and stop trying to move too fast and let's just really get into stuff. And then as a practical tip, I think this. I say it all the time any time I have to present, I just say again, can we ask consent before we share images regardless, can we just have that conversation about, I don't want my picture everywhere. I don't really want it in most, nobody does. So just don't share it and do the same for everyone. Just don't like the picture, don't share the picture without somebody's consent to do so. Brilliant those are fantastic tips. So think more and share less I love that. Well Maiéread, let's end there. So thank you for such a wonderful, thoughtful and informed episode. It was great. Thank you so much. Thanks, Jane. Great stuff. [THEME MUSIC PLAYING]