Our Research

The Brent Centre was founded in 1967, by Dr Moses Laufer, a psychoanalyst with the strong belief that psychological interventions should be accessible to young people, particularly during adolescence. Dr Moses Laufer knew that to help young people the Centre must have a strong understanding of the nature of adolescence. The Centre upholds this belief and remains committed to thinking about and understanding adolescence through ongoing research and discussion.

The staff at the Brent Centre have made a significant contribution to the body of works available regarding adolescent mental health, publishing 6 books to date, 10 monographs and many papers on the subject. Many of our staff are engaged in teaching and present widely at Conferences internationally on the work developed at the Centre.

As a modern provider of psychological interventions, we have a number of research projects that enable us to evaluate the effectiveness of our work, contributing towards the evidence base for psychotherapeutic treatments with adolescents. In particular, since 2001 the Centre has been running a research outcome study, evaluating Adolescent Exploratory Therapy and Psychotherapy. Our research team also collates and analyses data through our clinical audit cycle that informs the development of our services.

Specialist Research Programmes

Youth Offending- Our research team has begun a three year project to explore the link between youth offending behaviour and developmental breakdown in adolescence. This research will build upon an initial pilot project of group work intervention in the Youth Offending Service. This research has two aims; first to evaluate the effectiveness of psychoanalytically orientated discussion groups, and secondly to explore, through a qualitative approach, offending behaviour during adolescence.

We are supported in this research by:

Professor Michael Rustin (Professor of Sociology, University of East London and visiting Professor at the Tavistock Clinic).

International Psychoanalytic Association

Brent Youth Offending Service

Please contact us if you’d like to know more about our research or recent publications.