B3762 - Young peoples barriers to mental health services - 26/04/2021

B number: 
B3762
Principal applicant name: 
Corine Driessens | ARC-Wessex @ University of Southampton (UK)
Co-applicants: 
Peter W Smith, Fiona Lacey
Title of project: 
Young people's barriers to mental health services
Proposal summary: 

Research has discovered that on any given day in England, 28.5% of young people experience mental health problems, and that as little as one in four of them receive formal support for these problems. There is a lack of knowledge of what happens to those young people not receiving mental health services. For those individuals receiving mental health services, mental health problems have been shown to limit economic, vocational, and social functioning. International studies suggest that 50 to 70% of young people who receive services for their mental health problems continue to experience these problems in adulthood.

The proposed project will learn from cohort data which young people are less likely to receive professional support for their mental health problems and what the characteristics are of those young people not receiving mental health services for their problems. It will also be determined how many young people who do not receive mental health services for their problems continue to experience mental health problems in young adulthood and how resilient these young people were during the COVID pandemic.

The feedback provided by Young People will help direct the course of the project. While researchers from the University of Southampton will share the findings with the academic community, YOUNGMINDS will spread the word about our research and findings to their members and followers, young people, mental health service providers and policy makers using a variety of different media. Output activities will increase awareness and promote discussion among the stakeholder groups and ease the way for more effective mental health support for young people.

Impact of research: 
By focusing our research on causative ameliorating childhood factors of young people’s mental health and focus special attention on those young people not accessing formal mental health services we hope to contribute to the identification of at-risk adolescents, barriers for accessing mental health services, and need for public awareness campaigns, while also spark professional and political interest for those young people not accessing services for their mental health problems. The information gathered can stimulate young people’s mental health campaigns aimed at adolescents at risk. The Young People recruited from Young Minds to advise on this project will have an ‘advisory’ work contract with Young Minds. They will be trained by Young Minds to lead workshops with their peers to discuss our project and will feed information back to research team regarding development of project, adjustments to existing analyses, and interpretation of findings. The staff at Young Minds will lead on the dissemination to the public and Young People by posting updates of the study on their website, post information on social media, and mail information to their members. They will also lead on professional and policy dissemination by organizing a round table with mental health professionals at the NHS and other charities, as well as policy makers. Birth cohort studies are best placed to gather evidence relating to development and management of mental health. Although their representativeness tends to diminish over time as different groups drop out of the study differentially, this bias can be controlled statistically. By successfully applying a nonignorable missing data model to the field of mental health research, we further advance a missing data approach that can be promoted within the wider field of applied health care research.
Date proposal received: 
Monday, 19 April, 2021
Date proposal approved: 
Tuesday, 20 April, 2021
Keywords: 
Mental health - Psychology, Psychiatry, Cognition, Mental health, Statistical methods, Statistical methods