Regulating Emotions – Strengthening Adolescent Resilience

RE-STAR is a four-year, interdisciplinary programme being led by Professor Edmund Sonuga-Barke of the Experimental Psychopathology and Neurodevelopment Research Group at King’s College London.

Many neurodivergent young people such as those with ADHD or autism traits develop depression during adolescence – but we currently don’t know which individuals are at risk, what underlying processes increase that risk or, perhaps most importantly, the best way to intervene to increase resilience to reduce that risk.

RE-STAR will address these gaps by exploring the interplay between autism and/or ADHD traits, exposure to environmental stressors, and emotional responding in neurodivergent young people (NYP), in driving developmental pathways to depression.

RE-STAR's Objectives

Working across disciplines, we have three main objectives:

Explore emotional responses to everyday stressors from the young people's point of view and develop new, more authentic ways to measure them
Use these new measurement approaches to identify potentially modifiable intervention targets by studying the cognitive/neurophysiological underpinnings of emotional responding in neurodivergent young people and examining why they lead to later depression in some individuals but not others
Develop new strategies to arrest the negative progression from early adolescent neurodivergence to later depression, considering environmental adaptations as well as ways to support young people to manage challenging situations.

Publications

Participatory translational science of neurodivergence: model for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism research. (2024). Edmund J.S. Sonuga-Barke, Susie Chandler, Steve Lukito, Myrofora Kakoulidou, Graham Moore, Niki Cooper, Maciej Matejko, Isabel Jackson, Beta Balwani, Tiegan Boyens, Dorian Poulton, Luke Harvey-Nguyen, Sylvan Baker and Georgia Pavlopoulou on behalf of the RE-STAR team. The British Journal of Psychiatry. doi: 10.1192/bjp.2023.151 (PDF version)
Deepening the participation of neurodivergent youth in qualitative mental health research: Co‐development of a general approach and the evaluation of its implementation in a study on emotion. (2024). Myrofora Kakoulidou, Georgia Pavlopoulou, Susie Chandler, Steve Lukito, Maciej Matejko, Isabel Jackson, Beta Balwani, Tiegan Boyens, Dorian Poulton, Luke Harvey‐Nguyen, Zoe Glen, Archie Wilson, Elisa Ly, Elizabeth Macauley, Sylvan Baker, Georgina Bullen, Edmund J. S. Sonuga‐Barke, On behalf of the RE‐STAR team. JCPP Advances. doi: 10.1002/jcv2.12287 (PDF version)

Watch the video below for an overview of RE-STAR from our Principal Investigator, Prof Edmund Sonuga-Barke:

Meet the team

Work Package Teams

Work Package 1 (My Emotions and Me), our Research Associate is Steve Lukito, and our Research Assistant is Myrto (Myrofora) Kakoulidou.

Work Package 2 (Be Me!), our Research Associate is Steve Lukito and our Research Assistant is Eloise Funnell.

Work Package 3 (My Emotions and Me Over Time), our Research Associate is Kirsty Griffiths and our Research Assistant is Umaya Prasad.

Work Packages 4 and 5 (The Emotional Lives of Young People in School), our Research Associate is Myrto (Myrofora) Kakoulidou and our Research Assistant is Lauren Low.

Administration

Susie Chandler is our Project Manager and Doug Nightingale is our Administrator.

Edmund Sonuga-Barke is our Chief Investigator.

Youth Researcher and Advisory Panel (Y-RAP)

We have recruited and are working alongside our Y-RAP, who will play an integral role in the planning and delivery of RE-STAR. Learn more about our duty of care protocol (pdf).