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Winifred Robinson has been alongside Born in Bradford, one of the largest research studies in the world, since it started recruiting pregnant mothers in 2007. Now the thousands of children who have been tracked since birth are teenagers and the study is being widened to include every youngster in secondary school years eight through to ten. The aim is to focus in on mental wellbeing and to offer a whole range of interventions to improve lives in the city.

The Age of Wonder is backed by the Wellcome Trust and over the next seven years the data collected will provide unique insights into how teenagers grow and adapt. Alongside questionnaires, they are being weighed, measured and will be offered blood tests, blood pressure monitoring and skin fold readings. The researchers have been going into school assemblies across the city explaining to pupils what will be happening and how it will benefit them

Winifred hears from medical experts about some of the early data to emerge from the study, particularly around the questionnaires and the light they throw on things like childhood anxiety, loneliness and poor body image. The Age of Wonder is being supported by some of the worlds most respected experts in adolescent mental health and the aim is to provide interventions that can be tried on a small scale in different settings. These interventions might well result in improvements which can then be extended across different areas.

According to Professor John Wright, who heads the study, this is an excellent opportunity to shift the gaze to mental health because it鈥檚 such a critical time in terms of brain development: 鈥渋t鈥檚 a time when a child鈥檚 minds changes to an adult mind. And we have this plasticity in our brains, but we are also immersed in this rush of hormones that鈥檚 happening in puberty. And we know that adolescent mental health is such a priority for the health service. So over the last twenty years adolescent mental health has been deteriorating year on year not just in Bradford or the UK, but internationally.

鈥淲e are seeing this rise in anxiety, eating disorders, depression and serious mental illness. And there鈥檚 a spectrum, from feeling sad, helpless or hopeless, having a lack of energy or a lack of interest in things at one end of the spectrum and at the other it is self-harm and risk-taking behaviours such as taking drugs. This spectrum of mental ill health is happening, and we need to understand a bit more about why its increasing and why it鈥檚 spiked over the pandemic. The Age of Wonder will really focus on this, and the young people will be involved throughout in planning and participating in ways to tackle it.鈥�

Photographs by Carolyn Mendelsohn