Simona Skripkauskaite

My research interests concern various aspects of mental health and social development with a particular focus on neurodiversity. I am particularly passionate about applying (and supporting others in doing so) advanced quantitative methods and statistics across experimental and longitudinal survey data to understand the complex processes underlying successful functioning and development across varying contexts.

Specifically, my current research focuses on:

• Service access in neurodivergent children who develop mental health conditions. My ADR UK Fellowship aims to provide a clearer picture of pathways through educational support, social care, and health services available for neurodivergent children who develop mental health conditions. This project is using administrative data linkage from the Education and Child Health Outcomes from Linked Data (ECHILD) dataset and aims to actively engage lived experience advisors (such as neurodivergent young people and their parents) and policymakers (such as local commissioners) throughout the research lifecycle.
• Child and adolescent mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. I am a UK principal investigator (PI) for an international the ESRC/JSPS project on Learning from the trajectories of mental health challenges for children, young people and parents across Japan and the UK over the course of COVID-19. My work in this project builds on my post-doc research for the Co-SPACE study tracking how children, young people, and parents have been affected since the start of the pandemic. The aim is to develop a further understanding of medium and long-term impacts of the pandemic on the mental health symptoms of young people and parents across countries, as well as co-design guidelines for policy makers and health authorities together with the young people in both countries. I also chair the international Co-SPACE consortium that combines researchers from over 10 countries investigating changes in child, adolescent, and parent mental health over the pandemic.
• Factors associated with adolescent mental health and support needs. I also conduct research within the OxWell Student Survey, a large schools-based a repeated cross-sectional design survey collecting data on a range of questions on mental ill-health and well-being, life experiences, and behaviours. Here, my work to date has focused on understanding the complex relationships between adolescent well-being and gaming or various online activities, as well as support needs at the intersection of self-harm and neurodiversity. 

For my full list of publications see my Google Scholar profile.

Graduate student (DPhil) applicants: I am open to a DPhil (PhD) supervision of projects related to mental health in neurodivergent children and young people. If you are interested, please get in touch well before the application deadline.