Read on Twitter
I joined twitter because @DrS_Reynolds said I should. She wasn't wrong. 1/n
I have learned so much on here, more than I could ever do anywhere else. I follow a number of mental health service users and learn so much from them. I hope that by changing how I teach and research I do their work on here justice.
I follow #ActuallyAutistic people. You have profoundly changed how I think about autism, and how I teach and research. 3/n
I follow fellow psychologists across lots of different countries and I get to hear about your research either as it is published or sometimes at preprint stage. 4/n
I try and educate myself about social movements here and have had some excellent book recommendations by brilliant scholars across the world. 5/n
There are also downsides and quite often I have to stay off twitter for a day or two to re-set. 6/n
I got many of my followers when I advertised a PhD place that focused on children's mental health. Lots of people got in touch. Most of them are highly qualified, passionate individuals. But they can't necessarily do the research they want to. 7/n
We know that mental health research is chronically under-funded and I would suggest that children's mental health research is even more under-funded despite societal interest in helping young people. 8/n
We can tell from the Covid-19 response that children have been the bottom of the list in terms of priorities, and despite wide-ranging concerns about children's mental health in professionals and researchers, not much is being done. 9/n
We have a work-force out there who are ready and waiting to do top quality research into children's mental health. They have professional experience, they have research experience, and they have personal experience. 10/n
So lets do it. Lets properly fund research into children's mental health. Let us understand their mental health better and then lets organise services to meet their needs. 11/n
and then when we have done that and we have made improvements to children's mental health, lets tweet about it! 12/12
