Physical health on adolescent inpatient units
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Physical health and lifestyle of young people on adolescent inpatient units in Greater Manchester: A qualitative study with service users and staff.
IRAS ID
265488
Contact name
Rebekah Carney
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, 2 days
Research summary
Young people with serious mental illness (SMI) have poorer physical health and are more likely to live an unhealthy lifestyle compared with their peers. They experience significantly more barriers to exercising, eating well and looking after their physical health. This contributes to their poor physical health and results in an increased likelihood of developing preventable diseases such as obesity and type II diabetes. Young people in adolescent inpatient wards are even more at risk, given their poorer mental health and restrictions to general daily life. We aim to explore this further and understand the experiences of young people admitted to adolescent inpatient wards. We will conduct semi-structured interviews with service users and staff at an adolescent inpatient unit in Greater Manchester.
The aim of the interview will be to collect information about the physical health needs of young inpatients, their current lifestyle habits including diet and exercise and the factors affecting this, what helps and hinders their ability to live a healthy lifestyle on inpatient units, and the experiences of physical health monitoring. Interviews will take approximately one hour and service users (14-18 years) or staff working on the adolescent inpatient wards will be invited to take part, providing they have been there for a minimum of 2-weeks. We aim to recruit up to 8 people in each group. Interviews will take place in a private room and will be audio recorded on a secure device. The findings will be used to inform the development of an intervention to improve the physical health and wellbeing of young people admitted to adolescent inpatient units.REC name
North West - Greater Manchester East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/NW/0458
Date of REC Opinion
30 Jul 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion