Shirley Ann Reynolds

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Reading

The ‘self’ is of interest across multiple psychological, cognitive, and social sciences. Unhelpfully, a plethora of terms are used across different theoretical and empirical areas. This leads to inconsistency, confusion and lack of clarity and impedes cross-disciplinary communication and progress. To improve clarity, increase parsimony and support...

Objective: Epidemiological studies on the prevalence of elevated depression symptoms among female adolescents in Saudi Arabia report a wide variation, ranging from 13.9% to 80.2%. However, different methods of assessment and sampling have been used. The aim of the current study is to estimate the prevalence of elevated depression symptoms amongst...

This review paper summarizes the results of the IMPACT study and their implications for psychological treatment of adolescents with moderate to severe unipolar major depression. IMPACT (Improving Mood with Psychoanalytic and Cognitive Therapies) was a pragmatic, superiority randomized controlled trial, conducted in the UK, which compared the clinic...

Purpose/Objective Young people with paediatric acquired brain injury (pABI) are twice as likely to develop a mood disorder as their peers, frequently have significant unmet socio-emotional needs, and are at over double the risk of going on to use adult mental health services. Recent years have seen significant advances in the development of interve...

Objectives: Periods of social isolation are associated with loneliness in children and young people, and loneliness is associated with poor mental and physical health. Children and young people with pre-existing mental health difficulties may be prone to loneliness. Containment of COVID-19 has necessitated widespread social isolation, with unprece...

Objective: Fatigue is a common and debilitating symptom of major depressive disorder (MDD). Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a recommended psychological treatment for adolescents with moderate to severe depression. This study explored the experience of CBT in fatigued adolescents with MDD. Design: A qualitative study was conducted using ex...

Loneliness is a common experience in adolescence and is related to a range of mental health problems. Such feelings may have been increased by social distancing measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to investigate the effect of loneliness, social contact, and parent relationships on adolescent mental health during lockdown in t...

Background Parents are key to helping their adolescent child access psychological therapy for mental health problems such as depression. However, little is known about how parents experience their child’s psychological therapy. We aimed to explore parents’ experiences of their adolescent child’s cognitive behaviour therapy for depression. Method W...

BACKGROUND: Parents are key to helping their adolescent child access psychological therapy for mental health problems such as depression. However, little is known about how parents experience their child's psychological therapy. We aimed to explore parents' experiences of their adolescent child's cognitive behaviour therapy for depression. METHOD:...

Background Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is common, typically starts in adolescence and has a low natural recovery rate. Existing psychological treatments for adolescent SAD are only moderately effective. It is possible that recovery rates for adolescents could be substantially improved by adapting a psychological therapy that is highly effective a...

Anhedonia, the loss of interest and pleasure in previously enjoyable experiences, is a core symptom of depression and a characteristic of other mental health and physical health problems. Most self-report measures of anhedonia has been developed for use with adults and their suitability for adolescents is questionable. In this article, we describe...

(1) Background: There is evidence of an attention bias–anxiety relationship in children, but lack of appropriate methods has limited the number of studies with children younger than eight years old. This study used eye tracking as a measure of overt attention in young children. The aim of this study was to assess anxiety-related attention bias in c...

(1) Background: There is robust evidence of an attention bias-anxiety relationship in children, but lack of appropriate methods has limited the number of studies with children younger than 8 years old. This study used eye-tracking as a measure of overt attention in young children. The aim of this study was to assess anxiety related attention bias i...

Objectives: Anhedonia, the loss of interest and pleasure, is a core symptom of depression and is associated with deficits in reward processing. Behavioural Activation for depression may address this symptom due to its focus on identifying and increasing intrinsically rewarding activities. Design: This was a qualitative study employing reflexive...

It is heartening to see that our rapid systematic review¹ is stimulating others to highlight the needs of particular subsets of vulnerable children and adolescents. We found evidence that loneliness in children and adolescents is associated with increased depression and anxiety symptoms both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. We agree with Dr. M...

Objectives Adolescence represents a significant period of vulnerability for the development of depression. Whilst research has begun to explore factors associated with the development, maintenance and outcomes of adolescent depression, there is little research investigating this experience from a parental viewpoint. The aim of this study was to exp...

Objective Disease containment of COVID-19 has necessitated widespread social isolation. We aimed to establish what is known about how loneliness and disease containment measures impact on the mental health in children and adolescents. Method For this rapid review, we searched MEDLINE, PSYCHINFO, and Web of Science for articles published between 01...

Anhedonia (or loss of interest and pleasure) is a core symptom of depression and may predict poor treatment outcome. However, little is known about the subjective experience of anhedonia, and it is rarely targeted in psychological treatment for depression. The aim of this study is to examine how young people experience anhedonia in the context of d...

Adolescence is an important period for cognitive maturation and emotional regulation and this age group is particularly vulnerable to developing depression. Diets rich in fruits and vegetables have been associated with decreased risk of developing depressive disorders across the lifespan, an association that may be due to the high flavonoid content...

Disturbed sleep is a common symptom of depression in adolescents, but this symptom is not often targeted in psychological therapies for depression. Although the causal relationship between sleep and depression is unclear, there is increasing evidence that in adults, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) improves sleep problems and reduc...

Background The diagnosis of depression in adolescents relies on identifying the presence of specific core and additional symptoms. Symptoms can be identified using structured or unstructured interviews and a range of questionnaire measures, which are completed by the young person and by a parent or carer. The aim of this research was to examine the...

Adolescence is a critical developmental period. It involves the construction and consolidation of “the self” and the laying down of autobiographical memories that endure throughout life. There is limited data that examines how young people spontaneously describe their “self”. The aim of the current study is to provide normative data of adolescent g...

Objectives Adolescence represents a critical phase when the concept of self is developed and consolidated. Depressed adolescents globally endorse more negative and fewer positive self‐descriptive words compared with non‐depressed adolescents. Yet, the methods used have not allowed for more detailed exploration of the specific content of these self‐...

Poor sleep is a significant risk factor for depression across the lifespan and sleep problems have been hypothesised to contribute to the onset and maintenance of depression symptoms. However, sleep problems are usually not a direct target of interventions for depression. A range of non-pharmacological treatments can reduce sleep problems but it is...

Purpose Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based treatment for common mental health problems that affect children, young people and adults. The suitability of CBT for children has been questioned because it requires children to think about their thoughts, feelings and behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to investigate which cog...

People who have depression have difficulty recalling specific autobiographical information (Sumner, (2011) The mechanisms underlying overgeneral autobiographical memory: An evaluative review of evidence for the Ca R-FA-X model. Clinical Psychology Review, 3231(1), 34–48). This is called overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) and is associated wi...

Background: Adolescence represents a period of vulnerability to affective disorders. Neuroticism is considered a heritable risk factor for depression, but is not directly amenable to intervention. Therefore, it is important to identify the contributions of modifiable risk factors. Negative cognitive biases are implicated in the onset and maintenan...

Objectives: Depression is characterized by a range of systematic negative biases in thinking and information processing. These biases are believed to play a causal role in the aetiology and maintenance of depression, and it has been proposed that the combined effect of cognitive biases may have greater impact on depression than individual biases a...

When comparing the relative effectiveness of different psychological treatment approaches using clinical trials, it is essential to establish fidelity to each manualized therapy, and differentiation between the treatment arms. Yet few psychological therapy trials include details about the assessment of treatment integrity and little is known about...

The Ambiguous Scenarios Test for Depression in Adolescents (AST-DA) is a 20-item measure of depressive interpretation bias. It has good face and construct validity and discriminates between clinical and non-clinical samples. However, a shorter measure would reduce burden on young people and make the instrument more useful in clinical settings. The...

Background: Depression in adolescence is a common and serious mental health problem. In the UK, access to evidence-based psychological treatments is limited, and training and employing therapists to deliver these is expensive. Brief behavioural activation for the treatment of depression (BATD) has great potential for use with adolescents and to be...

Background The Obsessive–Compulsive Treatment Efficacy randomised controlled Trial emerged from a research recommendation in National Institute for Health and Care Excellence obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) guidelines, which specified the need to evaluate cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) treatment intensity formats. Objectives To determine...

Behavioral activation (BA) can be as effective as cognitive-behavioral therapy for the treatment of depression in adults, but to date there is little research with adolescents. This is problematic given the recognized need to increase access to evidence-based interventions for depression in young people. We have developed a new adaptation of brief...

Background Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is prevalent and without adequate treatment usually follows a chronic course. “High-intensity” cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) from a specialist therapist is current “best practice.” However, access is difficult because of limited numbers of therapists and because of the disabling effects of OCD symp...

Background: Rumination predicts depression in adults and adolescents. The development of rumination has been linked to parenting practices, but only limited research has investigated this and research has tended to rely on self-report parenting measures. Aims: To investigate the relationship between female adolescent rumination and maternal mode...

Background Although there are effective psychological treatments for unipolar major depression in adolescents, whether or not one or more of the available therapies maintain reduced depressive symptoms 1 year after the end of treatment is not known. This is a non-trivial issue because maintaining lowered depressive symptoms below a clinical thresho...

Epidemiological evidence suggests that consumption of flavonoids (usually via fruits and vegetables) is associated with decreased risk of developing depression. One plausible explanation for this association is the well-documented beneficial effects of flavonoids on executive function (EF). Impaired EF is linked to cognitive processes (e.g., rumina...

Background: Psychological treatments for adolescents with unipolar major depressive disorder are associated with diagnostic remission within 28 weeks in 65-70% of patients. We aimed to assess the medium-term effects and costs of psychological therapies on maintenance of reduced depression symptoms 12 months after treatment. Methods: We did this...

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is a well-established treatment for childhood anxiety disorders. Meta-analyses have concluded that approximately 60% of children recover following treatment, however these include studies using a broad range of diagnostic indices to assess outcomes including whether children are free of the one anxiety disorder that...

Objective: Unipolar major depressions (MD) emerge markedly during adolescence. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) UK recommends psychological therapies, with accompanying selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) prescribed in severe cases only. Here we seek to determine the extent and rationale of SSRI prescribing in ad...

This review critically evaluates previous studies investigating the association between dietary intake of children and young people and depression and related mental health problems. A systematic literature search was conducted using electronic databases such as PsycINFO, MEDLINE, PubMed and Cochrane. A total of twenty studies were identified that...

Background: Adolescence is a period of increased risk for the development of depression. Epidemiological and clinical studies suggest that the phenomenology of depression may differ during childhood and adolescence. However, participants in these studies may not reflect depressed young people referred to routine clinical services. The aim of this...

Given the long-term negative outcomes associated with depression in adolescence, there is a pressing need to develop brief, evidence-based treatments that are accessible to more young people experiencing low mood. Behavioral Activation (BA) is an effective treatment for adult depression; however, little research has focused on the use of BA with de...

We have concerns about the editorial process involved in the publication of Sharma and colleagues’ article.1 The article is fundamentally flawed in presentation and logic, and the results were further misrepresented by The BMJ press release. The BMJ is highly regarded and anything it publishes will probably be taken as fact by journalists and the p...

Interpretation biases have been shown to play a role in adult depression and are a target in cognitive behavioural therapy. Adolescence is a key risk period for the development of depression and a period of rapid cognitive and emotional development but little research has investigated the relationship between interpretation biases and depression in...

\textbf{BACKGROUND}$: Psychological treatments for adolescents with unipolar major depressive disorder are associated with diagnostic remission within 28 weeks in 65-70% of patients. We aimed to assess the medium-term effects and costs of psychological therapies on maintenance of reduced depression symptoms 12 months after treatment. $\textbf{METHO...

Aims: Training has been shown to improve the ability of people with intellectual disabilities (IDs) to perform some cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) tasks. This study used a computerised training paradigm with the aim of improving the ability of people with IDs to: a) discriminate between behaviours, thoughts and feelings, and b) link situation...

The extent to which cognitive models of development and maintenance of depression apply to adolescents is largely untested, despite the widespread application of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) for depressed adolescents. Cognitive models suggest that negative cognitions, including interpretation bias, play a role in etiology and maintenance of dep...

Background: Depression in adolescence is debilitating with high recurrence in adulthood, yet its pathophysiological mechanism remains enigmatic. To examine the interaction between emotion, cognition and treatment, functional brain responses to sad and happy distractors in an affective go/no-go task were explored before and after Cognitive Behaviou...

There is an increasing evidence base for the effectiveness of Behavioural Activation in treating adult depression; however, there has been little investigation of using this approach with adolescents. This article reports on the adaptation of brief Behavioural Activation for Depression (BATD) for adolescents (BATD-A). A case study is reported to il...

Aims The aim was to examine whether specific skills required for cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) could be taught using a computerised training paradigm with people who have intellectual disabilities (IDs). Training aimed to improve: a) ability to link pairs of situations and mediating beliefs to emotions, and b) ability to link pairs of situati...

This study examines whether combined cognitive bias modification for interpretative biases (CBM-I) and computerised cognitive behaviour therapy (C-CBT) can produce enhanced positive effects on interpretation biases and social anxiety. Forty socially anxious students were randomly assigned into two conditions, an intervention group (positive CBM-I +...

There is an increasing evidence base for the effectiveness of Behavioural Activation in treating adult depression; however, there has been little investigation of using this approach with adolescents. This article reports on the adaptation of brief Behavioural Activation for Depression (BATD) for adolescents (BATD-A). A case study is reported to il...

This study examines the effects of a multi-session Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) program on interpretative biases and social anxiety in an Iranian sample. Thirty-six volunteers with a high score on social anxiety measures were recruited from a student population and randomly allocated into the experimental and control groups. In the experimenta...

Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) has been shown to change interpretation biases commonly associated with anxiety and depression and may help ameliorate symptoms of these disorders. However, its evidence base for adolescents is scarce. Previous results have been hard to interpret because of methodological issues. In particular, many studies have us...

Background UK National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) specify recommendations for the treatment and management of OCD using a stepped care approach. Steps three to six of this model recommend treatment options for people with OCD that range from low-intensity guided self-help (GSH) to...

This chapter outlines four specific cognitive techniques which can be used to reduce or change children's and young people's negative thoughts. The use of positive imagery, self-talk, thought stopping and thought acceptance are described and illustrated through clinical examples. Common problems in therapy are identified and ways to adapt clinical...

Negative thoughts are characteristic features of depression and anxiety and within the CBT model are seen to play a role in maintaining depression and anxiety. This chapter outlines methods of reducing and changing negative thoughts with children and adolescents. The use of thought diaries, thought challenging and behavioral experiences is describe...

Major depressive disorders (MDD) are a debilitating and pervasive group of mental illnesses afflicting many millions of people resulting in the loss of 110 million working days and more than 2,500 suicides per annum. Adolescent MDD patients attending NHS clinics show high rates of recurrence into adult life. A meta-analysis of recent research shows...

Objective: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in young people can be effectively treated with Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). Practice guidelines in the United Kingdom recommend that CBT be delivered with parental or family involvement; however, there is no evidence from randomized trials that this enhances effectiveness. The aim of this trial...

Introduction Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterised by the presence of either obsessions or compulsions, but commonly both (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence [NICE], 2005). Obsessions are defined as recurrent intrusive thoughts, images or urges which are distressing. Compulsions are repetitive behaviours or mental...

The growth and development of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) means that many more children and adolescents with mental health problems can now benefit from an effective psychological treatment. In human terms this is an enormously important achievement because of the positive impacts on children and families in the short and longer term. Prompt...

Depressive Disorders Depression is a common and potentially serious, even life-threatening, disorder. At any time, around 3% of adolescents will experience a period of depression which would meet the criteria for diagnosis (Costello et al., 2005). Depression occurs at a rate of about 1.5% in pre-adolescent children but rises in adolescence (Angold...

Now firmly established as the standard text on the subject, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Children and Families, 3rd edition incorporates new and updated material on many topics not covered in previous editions, including the use of low intensity treatment methods with families, the use of new technologies to deliver cognitive behaviour therapy (...

Abstract This case series compares patient experiences and therapeutic processes between two modalities of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for depression: computerized CBT (cCBT) and therapist-delivered CBT (tCBT). In a mixed-methods repeated-measures case series, six participants were offered cCBT and tCBT in sequence, with the order of delivery...

Cognitive theories of social anxiety indicate that negative cognitive biases play a key role in causing and maintaining social anxiety. On the basis of these cognitive theories, laboratory-based research has shown that individuals with social anxiety exhibit negative interpretation biases of ambiguous social situations. Cognitive Bias Modification...

In recent years, a number of sophisticated cognitive models of anxiety disorders have emerged in the adult literature, for example Clark and Wells's model of social anxiety disorder (Clark & Wells, 1995), Wells's model of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) (Wells, 1999) and Salkovskis’ model of obsessive--compulsive disorder (OCD) (Salkovskis, 1985...

Background: Up to 70% of adolescents with moderate to severe unipolar major depression respond to psychological treatment plus Fluoxetine (20-50 mg) with symptom reduction and improved social function reported by 24 weeks after beginning treatment. Around 20% of non responders appear treatment resistant and 30% of responders relapse within 2 years...

Two simple non-linear techniques are shown to be useful for understanding the dynamics of affect, symptoms, social interaction experience and cognitive performance. The techniques are justified by arguments derived from chaos theory, and demonstrated using data from an intensive time sampling study in which 30 subjects completed a set of self-ratin...

The following gives a brief overview of an ongoing randomised control trial (RCT) for childhood obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). It then discusses some of the practical difficulties involved in doing research in non-research cultures and the impacts of the research.

The objective of this study was to investigate whether Salkovskis (1985) inflated responsibility model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) applied to children. In an experimental design, 81 children aged 9-12 years were randomly allocated to three conditions: an inflated responsibility group, a moderate responsibility group, and a reduced respon...

This study investigated whether children's fears could be un-learned using Rachman's indirect pathways for learning fear. We hypothesised that positive information and modelling a non-anxious response are effective methods of un-learning fears acquired through verbal information. One hundred and seven children aged 6-8 years received negative infor...

People with intellectual disabilities (ID) experience similar or even higher rates of mental health problems than the general population and there is a need to develop appropriate treatments. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is effective for a wide range of disorders in the general population. However, there is some evidence that people with ID ma...

The quality control of therapy in routine clinical practice depends to a large degree on the ability of therapists to evaluate accurately their own performance in administering therapy. However, the literature in many fields casts doubt on the accuracy of people's self-evaluations. This study aimed to examine the accuracy of therapists' judgments a...

Patient perspectives on how therapeutic letters contributed to their experience of cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) were investigated. Eight patients took part in semistructured interviews. A grounded, thematic analysis of their accounts suggested four general processes. First, letters offered a tangible, lasting framework for the assimilation of a...

Cognitive models of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) have been influential in understanding and treating the disorder in adults. Cognitive models may also be applicable to children and adolescents and would have important implications for treatment. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate research that examined the applicability of the...

This special issue is the culmination of an ESRC seminar series grant awarded to the authors of this editorial. We named the seminar series CATTS (Child Anxiety, Theory and Treatment Seminars) and it took the form of six highly stimulating, one-day seminars on the subject of child anxiety, with participants from clinical and academic backgrounds an...

To evaluate the effectiveness of a voluntary sector based befriending scheme in improving psychological wellbeing and quality of life for family carers of people with dementia. Single blind randomised controlled trial. Community settings in East Anglia and London. 236 family carers of people with primary progressive dementia. Contact with a befrien...

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The role of parents in the development of anxiety disorders in children is of increasing research and clinical interest. This study investigated interpretation biases of anxious children and their mothers using the ambiguous stimuli task developed by Hadwin, Frost, French, and Richards (1997). Three groups of children (aged 7 to 12 years) and their...

The aim of this introductory paper, and of this special issue of Cognition and Emotion, is to stimulate debate about theoretical issues that will inform child anxiety research in the coming years. Papers included in this special issue have arisen from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, UK) funded seminar series, which we called Child An...

Challenging behaviours may elicit negative emotional reactions and increase stress within care staff. The Leeds Attributional Coding System (LACS) was used to elicit spontaneous causal attributions of staff toward hypothetical clients with challenging behaviours. It was hypothesized that there would be relationships (1) between staff exposure to ch...

As a result of its expanding evidence base from randomized controlled trials, cognitive therapy is becoming increasingly widely practised in the treatment of many mental health problems. However, little is known about the extent to which it is carried out competently in practice, nor about what characteristics of therapists may be associated with c...

Epidemiological studies indicate that the prevalence of psychological problems in patients attending primary care services may be as high as 25%. To identify factors that influence the detection of psychological difficulties in adolescent patients receiving primary care in the UK. A prospective study of 13-16 year olds consecutively attending gener...

Background There is a need to develop and adapt therapies for use with people with learning disabilities who have mental health problems. Aims To examine the performance of people with learning disabilities on two cognitive therapy tasks (emotion recognition and discrimination among thoughts, feelings and behaviours). We hypothesized that cognitive...

Many young children appear to have skills sufficient to engage in basic elements of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). Previous research has, however, typically used children from non-clinical populations. It is important to assess children with mental health problems on cognitive skills relevant to CBT and to compare their performance to children...

There is very little evidence on the cost-effectiveness of social care interventions for people with dementia or their carers. The BEfriending and Costs of CAring trial (BECCA, ISRCTN08130075) aimed to establish whether a structured befriending service improved the quality of life of carers of people with dementia, and at what cost. We performed an...

To compare mental health, coping and family-functioning in parents of young people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety disorders, and no known mental health problems. Parents of young people with OCD (N = 28), other anxiety disorders (N = 28), and no known mental health problems (N = 62) completed the Brief Symptom Inventory (Derogati...