Precision Mental Healthcare in Children and Young People
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Precision Mental Healthcare in Children and Young People
IRAS ID
354067
Contact name
Amrit Sinha
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Sheffield
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 1 days
Research summary
Mental health services for children and young people (CYP) in England follow a stepped-care model for psychological interventions, where typically a low intensity (LI) treatment is offered first, and a high intensity intervention (HI) is only offered if deemed necessary after. Although the stepped care approach is more effective than treatment as usual for adults, it has a number of limitations, such as risks of initial exposure of clients to ineffective treatments and risk of disengagement during the wait period. Child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) experience an increased demand and there is a need to optimise treatment delivery. Evidence from adults with depression showed that psychological treatment outcome can be enhanced through stratified care, by matching client’s need to treatment intensity. As this has not be tested with CYP before, the current study aims to do this, by developing a predictive model investigating which, if any, CYP characteristics predict the need for high intensity treatment. This study will analyse retrospectively collected routine outcome data from CAMHS services in Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust. A supervised machine learning approach will be utilised to develop the algorithm that can predict which cases need HI treatment following completion of the LI intervention. The model will be tested for generalisability in a dataset collected as part of a previous study by members of the research team (PG & JD).
REC name
London - City & East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/LO/0347
Date of REC Opinion
2 May 2025
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion