CalmBrain

The digital platform helping students manage their mental health

CalmBrain is a digital platform which offers psychological intervention for schools to help pupils manage their mental health including feelings of anxiety, stress and trauma. The platform sets out to balance children’s nervous systems and calm stress responses, and reduce the stigma of children being seen as ‘different’ or having difficulties.

Dr Sarah Taylor is a consultant clinical psychologist, who works primarily with children and young people with severe developmental trauma, chronic neglect and potentially presenting with neurodiversity. Concerned about children being expected to talk about their feelings when many don’t yet have the cognitive capacity to do so, she created CalmBrain.

Preliminary evidence suggests CalmBrain is especially helpful for children from marginalised and disadvantaged backgrounds, as it reorganises the lower brain region in those children presenting as chaotic or highly traumatised. This is due to its focus on working with the underlying neurological networks that are stimulated through movement.

Dr Taylor assessed patients against a number of metrics including self-esteem, emotional awareness, learning difficulties, and anxiety and anger. When comparing scores before and after CalmBrain (six months apart), some patients saw an average improvement of over 50%, with the most significant reductions seen in anger, anxiety, self-regulation and self-esteem.

The team hope that the Innovate UK Inclusive Innovation Award will give CalmBrain the autonomy to gain the research data it needs to prove its efficacy as a reliable, valid and credible intervention for schools to use.

“The Inclusion Innovate Award allows CalmBrain to improve children’s lives.[…] It reinforces the ideologies that CalmBrain stands for – enabling all children to gain a purposeful, sensitive psychological intervention that is highly cost-effective and incredibly easy to implement,” says Dr Taylor.