Dr Ellen J Thompson

Dream job for anyone who’s worked with cohort surveys

4️⃣: A huge congratulations and thank you to the leads of this project: Amelia Edmondson-Stait & Alex Kwong and all those who contributed: Eileen Xu, Ahmed Elhakeem, Liana Romaniuk, Rebecca Pearson, @thaliaeley.bsky.social, @mcintosh2001.bsky.social, Heather Sibley

3️⃣: Many thanks to @wellcometrust.bsky.social for funding this project as part of the Wellcome Mental Health Data Prize, the participants from our studies (Children of the 90s (ALSPAC) and @clscohorts.bsky.social)

2️⃣: TIDAL is a free R package + web tool to analyse, visualise & interpret longitudinal trajectories.
Try it: tidal.shinyapps.io/tidalapp/
More: tidal-modelling.github.io

Software Application Profile: TIDAL—Tool to Implement Developmental Analysis of Longitudinal data Growth-curve modelling uses repeatedly measured data from the same individuals to estimate trajectories that describe how variables change over time and id

1️⃣: Our paper: TIDAL - Tool to Implement Developmental Analysis of Longitudinal data has just been published in the International Journal of Epidemiology: academic.oup.com/ije/article/... 🎉🎉🎉

AI, peer review and the human activity of science When researchers cede their scientific judgement to machines, we lose something important.

📚 AI, peer review and the human activity of science www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Excited about our new preprint: 1st successful genome-wide study of >61,000 panic attack and 29,000 panic disorder cases. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... We find 17 associations & evidence that peripheral neurons in eye, lungs and heart are involved in panic & other psychiatric disorders 1/n

"Differences in individuals’ sensitivity to life experiences can explain why the same negative or positive experiences may have varying effects on people’s mental health, depending on their genetic make-up. Our findings suggest that specific genetic variants influence how environmental exposures impact psychiatric and neurodevelopmental symptoms." Dr Elham Assary, Postdoctoral Researcher at King’s College London

Researchers have found #genetic factors that may make people more or less sensitive to the environments they experience.

It is the largest genetics study of identical #twins to date.

🔗 kcl.ac.uk/news/largest...

@kingscollegelondon.bsky.social @uclbrainscience.bsky.social @qmulfmd.bsky.social

I love how many of us *accidentally* became epidemiologists 🫣. It’s the best club!

@profjohndrury.bsky.social know anyone?

The proportion of Alzheimer's disease attributable to apolipoprotein E Objective To estimate the proportions of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and all-cause dementia burden attributable to the common risk alleles ε3 and ε4 in the APOE gene Design Genetic association analyses i...

One year later ... a major update to our manuscript showing that most Alzheimer's disease is attributable to the gene APOE. We expanded it to analyses of four studies, now with data on about 460,000 people in total.....
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
#Alzheimers #Dementia #Epidemiology #EpiSky

Editorial: A wake-up call: the second Commission on adolescent health

Adolescence, “a time of ideas, reimagination, revolution, and a creation of new approaches—exactly what we all need for a better future and the survival of our planet.”
 
Lancet editors on the 2nd Commission on adolescent health & wellbeing. Read 👉 bit.ly/4jadJQj

4 panel comic Panel 1: Politician on podium saying “Wooo! Let’s talk about mental health awareness! Panel 2: Audience member with raised hand says “And also funding for mental health services?” Panel 3: Politician presses button that triggers two rockets to pop out the sides of the podium Panel 4: Politician makes a swift exit through the skylight above, mercifully avoiding any tricky questions about actually providing substantial care for people with metal health issues.

Politicians During Mental Health Awareness Month

Job Opportunity at St George's University of London: Research Fellow in Social Epidemiology The Research Fellow will investigate young carers and health inequalities using advanced longitudinal quantitative methods. Responsibilities include data analysis, literature reviews, publishing findi...

I am hiring for a new researchers on my @nuffieldfoundation.org young carers project.
Closes 4thJune. After someone with strong quant longitudinal skills, passion for communicating research beyond academia & wants to work with people w lived experience/other sectors
jobs.sgul.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

The application of polygenic risk scores (PRS) in clinical practice has advanced but also received criticism. In this Perspective by Saskia Sanderson & @mikeinouye.bsky.social, major psychological and behavioural arguments against PRS applications have been assessed.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks to everybody who chimed in!

I arrived at the conclusion that (1) there's a lot of interesting stuff about interactions and (2) the figure I was looking for does not exist.

So, I made it myself! Here's a simple illustration of how to control for confounding in interactions:>

Social media use in adolescents with and without mental health conditions - Nature Human Behaviour Using a nationally representative UK sample of adolescents with clinical-level mental health symptoms, this Registered Report examined differences in social media use. The results suggest that adolesc...

After 3 years in the making, our Registered Report is out in @nathumbehav.nature.com!

We analyse nationally representative UK data from 3,340 adolescents (aged 11–19) to examine how social media use differs between those with and without mental health conditions. 🧵

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Remember the good times when the main threat to the scientific endeavor was conditioning on a collider

@mebozena.bsky.social

Climate change worry and the association with future depression and anxiety: cross-national analysis of 11 European countries Background Climate change affects people’s mental health directly and indirectly. Climate anxiety, characterised by persistent worry and distress about environmental changes, is increasingly recognise...

📢 New publication out today in BMJ Mental Health.

We looked at whether climate change worry is associated with an increased risk of future depression, anxiety and sleep disturbance across European countries, using data from the European Social Survey.

mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/28/1...

Intergenerational transmission of polygenic predisposition for neuropsychiatric traits on emotional and behavioural difficulties in childhood - Nature Communications Parental neuropsychiatric traits relate to children’s emotions and behaviours beyond genetic transmission alone. Here the author's findings suggest potential environmental risk factors that can act on...

Our work on intergenerational transmission of psychiatric risk is now out!! www.nature.com/articles/s41... @naturecomms.bsky.social with thanks to my super coauthors @leofrach.bsky.social @jessiebaldwin.bsky.social and several others who made this possible

Trying really really hard this year to not ramp up my work load before the spring break in order to “get things off my desk”.

I don’t know who needs to hear this but you’re allowed a break without your work load doubling before or after your leave!

First post will be a plug for our national fellowship network ➡️ We have an exciting new session focused on NIHR fellowships! 💡

Come along to this brilliant event and do spread the word for the network led by @flosheen.bsky.social @alice-kininmonth.bsky.social and myself 👇

Need to start using CC-BY-NC (if funders permit)

Reviewer notes: That’s a very nice mediation analysis you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it. Mediation analysis has gotten a lot of flak, including classic titles such as “Yes, but what’s the mechanism? (Don’t expect an easy answer)” (Bullock et al., 2010), “What mediation analysis can (not) ...

New blog post! In which I explain the issue with mediation analysis and sketch out one way to deal with the underlying causal inference problem -- in just a bit over 1,000 words!

If you have never found the time to read up on this, now is your chance.

www.the100.ci/2025/03/20/r...

Nice snippet from @popres-uk.bsky.social on the value of longitudinal population studies for understanding life course society and health, and the support PRUK can offer

Defragmenting psychology Nature Human Behaviour - Psychology is fragmented into the study of a myriad of constructs and measures, most of which are used very rarely. This hinders cumulative knowledge generation. We call on...

New comment by @faridanvari.bsky.social and friends arguing that psychology is fragmented into the study of too many constructs and measures with too few links.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our academic publishing system

Are you doing EMA research and wonder how to go about it? In recent work we've adressed some open questions and challenges, here is a brief summary of papers and materials.

🧵 #PsychSciSky 🧪 #StatsSky