The new Pears Maudsley Centre for Children and Young People has celebrated it’s landmark Opening Door Ceremony with a brilliant showcase of work from across the King’s Maudsley Partnership.  

Photography: Ben McDade

Yesterday evening, clinicians and researchers from across the King’s Maudsley Partnership attended a milestone celebratory event marking the initial opening of the Pears Maudsley Centre. They were joined by many of the donors who helped to fund the creation of the Centre, as well as the young people who have guided its design. 

Based at the heart of the world leading Maudsley Hospital site in South London, the pioneering new Centre has brought together clinical and scientific expertise with the aim of transforming the mental health of children and young people for generations to come. 

Professor Philip Shaw, Director of the King’s Maudsley Partnership said, “I have an immense feeling of pride at the sight of the Pears Maudsley Centre opening its doors.  It is the home of the Partnership, created to revolutionise how we understand and help children and young people living with mental health conditions.  It’s exciting to think of what we achieve by bringing clinicians and academics together under one roof, alongside children, young people and families.

“I’d like to share my sincere thanks to everyone who has contributed to getting us to this stage.” 

Guests were treated to a showcase of the work already taking place within the Partnership, including a demonstration of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy – designed to non-invasively capture images of brain activity – as well as a VR headset which helps young people learn how to manage emotional dysregulation. 

The evening also included a series of activities for guests of all ages to take part in, including learning how close up magic can help to improve communication skills, arts therapy, and a visual artist capturing the events of the night. 

Photography: Ben McDade

Dr Bruce Clark, Clinical Director of the King’s Maudsley Partnership said, “The challenges facing young people’s mental health today are numerous and it’s vital that we, as clinicians and researchers, are as well-equipped as we can be to meet them head on.  

“This ceremony represents the culmination of years of collaboration not only with colleagues from across medicine, research, and charity, but also with the many donors who have donated time and resources to make this a reality. Perhaps most important of all are the many young people who have guided the development of this Centre.” 

Senior leaders from across the Partnership shared speeches before a drinks reception on the third floor garden terrace – an area designed to promote good mental health in a natural space. 

Photography: Ben McDade

Sarah Holloway, Chief Executive of Maudsley Charity said, “The opening of the Pears Maudsley Centre is a watershed moment for children and young people’s mental health and a major milestone for us at Maudsley Charity. We have given £10m – our largest ever grant to date – towards the creation of this building but more importantly, as a proud member of the King’s Maudsley Partnership, we are excited by what will happen inside these walls.  

 

“This is the place where the best minds will collaborate on much-needed innovations in treatment and care, and where many young people and their families will find once again be given hope for the happy, healthy futures we all want for our young people.” 

Ade Odunlade, Interim CEO South London and Maudsley NHS Trust said, “The Pears Maudsley Centre represents a symbol of change, hope for the future and a commitment that we are putting children’s mental health on top of the agenda. It is setting the standard for and will influence healthcare settings around the world. I am so pleased to see our colleagues move in as we open this new chapter for the Trust, the King’s Maudsley Partnership, and the children and young people we support.”

Professor Shitij Kapur, Vice-Chancellor & President of King’s College London said, “This Pears Maudsley Centre reflects the very best of what we can achieve when universities, health services, charities and philanthropists work together in service of society. I am immensely proud of everyone who has helped bring this vision to life, and of the difference it will make to children, young people and their families for years to come.” 

 

Professor Matthew Hotopf CBE, Executive Dean of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Nueroscience at king’s College London said, “This is a hugely significant moment, marking the crucial next steps of the King’s Maudsley Partnership.

 

“With IoPPN colleagues joining later this year, and as the new Clinical Research Facility (designed with children and young people in mind) begins operation, this is an exciting time for the partnership and our collaborative work on groundbreaking mental health research and care for children and young people.”

The event is the first in a series of celebrations, culminating in a ribbon cutting ceremony once the Centre becomes fully operational in early 2027. 

For more information, please contact Patrick O’Brien (Senior Communications and Engagement Manager) 

Clinical services from South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust have started to transition into the new Pears Maudsley Centre for Children and Young People.

The first teams to move into the building include the Centre for Interventional Paediatric Psychopharmacology and Rare Diseases (CIPPRD), the Crisis Line and Response service, and the Bed Management team. Further CAMHS teams will continue to relocate throughout May.

The arrival of the first teams marks the beginning of a new chapter for the Pears Maudsley Centre, with a shared focus on delivering high‑quality care in an environment shaped around the needs of children, young people and their families. The building has designed to move away from traditional institutional settings to provide a more welcoming and calm experience for young people.

Reflecting on the importance of the new space, Dr Bruce Clark, Clinical Director of the King’s Maudsley Partnership, said:

“Very sadly, mental health services are often delivered from estates and settings that are just below par. We have a modern state‑of‑the‑art building that’s been designed with service user input, which had us focus on light and views of nature. It’s just a much more pleasant and destigmatising environment.”

Professor Philip Shaw, Director of the King’s Maudsley Partnership, shared what he is most looking forward to as the Centre opens its doors:

“I’m really looking forward to the first time a young person comes into the building, spends time in a welcoming waiting area designed those with sensory sensitivities, and then meets a supportive clinical team. On the same day, they may also be introduced to a research team in an equally welcoming space, where they can take part in research and help us deepen our understanding of mental health. This ‘joined-up‘ experience from care to research is what I’m most looking forward to.”

Alongside clinical services, research teams from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London will also be moving into the Clinical Research Facility within the Centre later this year, supporting closer collaboration between clinical care and research.

“It’s a state‑of‑the‑art building and it’s impressive when you look at it.  We’re looking forward to young people and their families coming in and seeing them collaborate with our clinical and research teams.”

 

The Centre has been made possible through a £10 million donation from Maudsley Charity, alongside the generous support of major donors, foundations and individual supporters.

Researchers at King’s College London have secured more than £3.6 million from Wellcome to launch an ambitious new study that could transform understanding of how children’s brains develop. The study will explore why some young people show resilience while others become vulnerable to mental health difficulties.

Led by Professor Chiara Nosarti, the Developing Children’s Connectome Project (DCCP) will build one of the world’s most comprehensive ultra‑high‑field neuroimaging datasets, following children from before birth through early adolescence.

The project draws on expertise across the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) and the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, bringing together specialists in child psychiatry, psychology, paediatric neurology, neuroimaging and computational neuroscience.

The new study will follow up children who were originally studied as babies as part of the Developing Human Connectome Project (dHCP), an internationally recognised programme that created the most detailed map of the newborn brain to date. By revisiting these children three times between the ages of 6 and 12, the DCCP will provide a unique window into how early brain organisation shapes later cognitive, behavioural and emotional development.

Using state‑of‑the‑art imaging at ultra‑high magnetic field strength, researchers will examine how brain networks evolve as children grow, and how biological and environmental factors interact to influence well‑being.

Professor Chiara Nosarti, Professor of Neurodevelopment and Mental Health, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, at King’s College London, said:

“The Developing Children’s Connectome Project will follow children from before birth into childhood, creating the most comprehensive ultra‑high‑field neuroimaging dataset to date spanning ages 6 to 12 and linking the earliest brain features to later resilience and mental health vulnerability. The study will provide rich new insights into how biology and environment combine to shape a child’s developmental trajectory, and use this knowledge to guide strategies supporting children’s well‑being.”

All researchers on the award are based at King’s, drawn from both IoPPN and FoLSM.The research will take place in the Clinical Research Facility (CRF) at the Pears Maudsley Centre, which is due to open in 2026, providing a highly specialised environment for paediatric research. The project will utilise King’s world‑leading neuroimaging facilities and expertise

Philip Shaw, Director of the King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People and Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London, said:

“We know a lot about the developing brain in infancy and in the teenage years, but remarkably little about middle childhood. Working from the Pears Maudsley Centre and St Thomas’, the research team will work with local families to fill this knowledge gap. The projects strength is the rich diversity of its London home, making sure that its insights into the developing mind and brain are relevant to all children.”

The team hopes that insights generated from the project will support the development of new approaches to promoting resilience, identifying early markers of mental health risk, and informing prevention strategies during childhood – a period when many psychiatric conditions begin to emerge.

The award reflects King’s globally recognised leadership in neurodevelopmental research.

Professor Grainne McAlonan, Director, NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), Clinical Professor of Translational Neuroscience, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, said:

“Under the leadership of Professor Nosarti and with contributions from her team of expert investigators across our NIHR Maudsley BRC and King’s Health Partners this unique research brings together psychology, psychiatry, paediatric neurology, neuroimaging and computational neuroscience to transform what we know about children’s brains.”

Professor Paola Dazzan, Professor of Neurobiology of Psychosis at King’s, and Co-Lead for Psychosis and Mood Disorders at the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, said:

“By characterizing neurodevelopment from the prenatal period through childhood, we can identify early brain signatures that forecast vulnerability to future mental health problems, including psychosis and mood disorders. This could provide a foundation for the development of targeted, developmentally timed interventions that may alter trajectories before psychopathology consolidates.”

An international team, led by researchers at the King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children & Young People, have received £2.2million in Wellcome Discovery funding to use AI to predict children at risk of OCD.

Obsessive-compulsive symptoms can be present in one in five children. Obsessions can be intrusive, unwelcome thoughts and compulsions may appear as repetitive, lengthy rituals.

Whilst most children and young people grow out of these symptoms, a small percentage continue to experience obsessions and compulsions that then can impair a person’s life, which can lead to a formal diagnosis of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). By this stage, OCD can be more challenging to treat, with more chronic symptoms predicting poorer outcomes.

“Talking to young people living with OCD and their parents, it’s clear that intervening early, before symptoms spiral out of control, could prevent a lot of distress and anguish. This project aims to do just that for children not just in the UK, but in Brazil, Sweden and beyond.” – Professor Philip Shaw, Director – King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children & Young People

Currently, identifying the children most at risk of developing full OCD is difficult, and this inability to predict the onset of OCD is halting advances in treatment and understanding. Prediction is a vital step to help implement early interventions, and tailor interventions to the needs of each young person.

The aim of this Wellcome funded project is to develop a tool to pinpoint who is likely to develop OCD and when this may be. To do this, easily obtainable medical information, often found in medical records, will be combined with more complex information on genetic make-up and brain features; to find out which type of information helps most in prediction.

“OCD is often thought of as an adult condition, but symptoms frequently emerge in childhood, and that is precisely where the greatest opportunity lies. This project builds a prediction tool that combines routinely collected medical information, the kind already sitting in clinical records, with genetic and brain imaging data to identify which children are most likely to go on to develop full OCD. AI gives us the ability to integrate those complex, multi-layered signals in a way that simply wasn’t feasible before, and to do so across diverse populations in the UK, Brazil, and Sweden.” – Professor Gustavo Sudre, Professor of Genomic Neuroimaging and Artificial Intelligence

Once this prediction tool has been developed, the team will create a framework that incorporates a diverse range of views, including those of people with lived experience of OCD. The framework and tool will be piloted with parents of children deemed at risk of

OCD, with a view of creating a scalable early intervention tool for OCD. This will involve culturally adapting, enriching and evaluating a digital early intervention too, including conducting open trials in the UK and Brazil to evaluate the intervention with parents of children identified as being at-risk, through the prediction tool developed earlier in the project.

Professor Philip Shaw and Professor Gustavo Sudre from the King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children & Young People will lead an international team including, Professor Elizabeth Shephard from the University of Sao Paulo, Professor Georgina Krebs from University College London, Professor David Mataix-Cols from Karolinska and Dr Nick Sireau and Dr Margherita Zenoni from Orchard OCD.

“Families affected by OCD often ask whether it is possible to prevent the condition in the next generation,” said Professor Mataix-Cols of Karolinska Institutet, one of the international centres involved in the project. “With the support of the Wellcome Trust, we will enhance and culturally adapt our prototype intervention for children at increased risk and evaluate it in the UK and Brazil. Our ambition is to intervene before symptoms become disabling by equipping parents with practical, evidence-based tools that can reduce risk.”

“Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder often emerges silently, with early warning signs that are difficult to interpret or act upon. By developing tools that can identify who is most at risk and when, this project has the potential to shift OCD from a condition we react to, to one we can anticipate and prevent. This represents a fundamental change in how we approach OCD: moving toward earlier intervention, personalised support, and ultimately better outcomes for children and families. Crucially, this research is grounded in lived experience and spans multiple countries, ensuring the solutions developed are both scientifically robust and truly meaningful to those affected.” – Dr Nick Sireau, Co-founder and Trustee, Orchard OCD

The researchers have worked extensively with over 150 people with lived experience on the early stages of this study and will continue to work closely with those with lived experience of OCD as the research progresses to ensure the findings and meaningful and shared widely.

The Centre of Neuroimaging Sciences at Denmark Hill Campus, King’s College London, is now home to a new investigational GE HealthCare MAGNUS 3T MRI scanner, the first of its calibre in Europe. GE HealthCare is a 30 year-long industry-partner of researchers at King’s College London.

The MAGNUS system is one of the first high-performance head-only scanners, specialised for brain imaging. The new technology will allow scientists to push the boundaries of what is possible in neuroscience and psychiatric research, particularly regarding brain development.

Previously unobtainable resolution

The GE HealthCare MAGNUS 3T achieves a level of detail up to 10 times finer than previous state-of-the-art commercial systems, measuring the brain in far tinier 3D volumes (voxels). Crucially, previous scanners relied on mathematical models that could only estimate broad tissue properties. The MAGNUS system allows researchers to unlock more advanced models and reveals specific features such as individual axon (the fibres that transmit electrical signals between neurons) diameters and cell sizes.

Studying developing brains

Precisely measuring axons, cellular size and their densities is crucial to researching brain development in children and young people. In a developing brain, new connections are forming. The new scanner allows highly accurate quantification of these changes in the living brain tissue.

For several developmentally linked conditions such as ADHD, autism and psychosis, the MAGNUS scanner provides a valuable tool to measure how white matter and connections develop differently in children and young people.

“What is exciting is that we can use this novel clinical scanner to generate extremely high-quality images of brain structure and function for all ages” commented Professor Steve Williams.

Importance for children and young people

Professor Steve Williams, Head of Neuroimaging at the School of Neuroscience, and his team have spent years working to make scanning more accessible to children and young people.

Conventional scanning is extremely loud and can be time consuming. This can be challenging for young children who struggle to stay still for long periods and those with ADHD or autism who may be sensitive to noise.

The MAGNUS system is compatible with new silent scanning methods previously developed by Professor Williams’ team in collaboration with GE HealthCare and with support from the NIHR Maudsley BRC.

“Scanners can be noisy. For people feeling anxious, who are neurodiverse, those with tinnitus or auditory hallucinations, the noise can make scanning intolerable. It was important to us that we made the scanners as comfortable and quiet as possible for everyone.” – Professor Steve Williams, Head of Neuroimaging at the School of Neuroscience.

The researchers have also developed imaging methods which tolerate movement during the scan, and the new MRI technologies allow for two to three times faster scanning.

“With conventional whole-body scanners, in order to image every organ, you have to compromise,” commented Professor Williams. “The GE HealthCare MAGNUS 3T scanner is much more optimised for the head and neck, which means we can also choose to prioritise data quality, resolution or scan time. This is particularly good for children, who may not want to be in a scanner for a long time.”

These developments, specifically aimed at children and young people, will enable research into developmental conditions such as autism, ADHD and psychosis to be more inclusive

In recognition of its vital role for children and young people, the new scanner was partly funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of the King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People.

“The new scanner is better for kids. It’s in a lovely room, makes less noise, and during many of the scans, the child can watch a movie or listen to their favourite music, to help them feel at ease.  We want scanning to be great for science and fun for kids,” commented Professor Philip Shaw, Director of the King’s Maudsley Partnership.

An opportunity for collaboration

The scanner will be available for use by researchers across the IoPPN, NIHR Maudsley BRC, the King’s Maudsley Partnership, King’s School of Dentistry and clinicians in King’s Health Partners.

The scanner also offers opportunities for collaboration further afield across the UK and internationally. Plans are developing for an international consortium between groups using these scanners across the globe.