Lucy Foulkes

I am a Prudence Trust Research Fellow and NIHR Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. 

My group’s work focuses on mental health and social development in adolescence. I am particularly interested in whether efforts intended to reduce mental health problems, such as awareness-raising campaigns and school initiatives, may inadvertently increase these problems in some individuals.

Our current research projects including the following:

 - Understanding how school-based mental health interventions might lead to unintended harm in adolescents, and who is most at risk

- Assessing how learning about mental health problems might change adolescents’ reporting of these symptoms

- Exploring self-diagnosis of mental health problems in adolescence and its relationship to identity development at this age

In the past I have also focused on social cognition in adolescents, particularly social risk, social reward and social influence processes, and how these are related to mental health problems. 

We use a range of methods in our work, including experimental designs, scale development, longitudinal analysis and systemic review/meta-analysis. I am increasingly interested in using qualitative approaches to address questions that quantitative methods cannot reach.

I have extensive experience of public science communication. My first book, What Mental Illness Really Is (…and what it isn’t), was published in 2021. My second, Coming Of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us, was published in 2024. I regularly give public talks about mental health (e.g. Royal Institution) and discuss this topic on podcasts and radio (e.g. BBC's All In The Mind, Guardian Science), and have written many articles for the mainstream media (e.g. The Guardian, New Scientist). I am also very active on Instagram, where I share research insights about adolescence in a brief, accessible format. 

See my full list of academic publications on Google Scholar

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