Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) including abuse, neglect, domestic violence, parental mental illness, and household substance misuse are among the strongest known predictors of mental health difficulties in young people. Yet the pathways through which ACEs affect wellbeing are not fully understood, and the question of how to support young people who have experienced them remains underresearched. Funded by the Medical Research Council under the Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind programme, ATTUNE investigates how ACEs shape mental health outcomes across different contexts, using participatory arts-based methods to develop co-produced, trauma-informed resources alongside the people they are designed to help.
The Research
ATTUNE brings together researchers across eight universities: Oxford (lead), Falmouth, Kent, Leeds, Queen Mary University of London, King's College London, University College London, and the University of Greenwich, in a programme running from September 2021 to August 2025. The project examines lived experiences of ACEs, how young people themselves define mental health and wellbeing, the intersection of neurodiversity with adverse experiences, and whether creative arts-based approaches can inform more effective trauma-informed interventions.
The methodology is explicitly participatory: young people are involved not as research subjects but as co-producers and partners throughout the project. This includes visual art-making, contributing to data analysis, developing trauma-informed resources, designing a serious game, and contributing to economic analysis and dissemination. Young people serve on Youth Participatory Advisory Groups (YPAGs) and participate in film crews producing project outputs. The rationale is that people with direct experience of ACEs and their effects are best placed to shape research that is actually useful, and that involving them meaningfully, rather than tokenistically, produces both better science and more usable outputs.
My Involvement
I was involved in ATTUNE through contributing to the project through a participatory session combining scientific exploration and artistic response. The event "Bringing Science and Art Together to Explore Adolescent Trauma", used creative methods to investigate how adverse childhood experiences shape mental health, and how young people's own understanding of their experiences can inform both the framing of research questions and the design of interventions.