The development of a Youth Mental Health Help Seeking decision aid
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The development of a Youth Mental Health Help Seeking decision aid: Promoting help-seeking to reduce long term disability
IRAS ID
174646
Contact name
Kathryn Greenwood
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
Mental health problems are most likely to develop during adolescence and young adulthood, yet young people are the least likely to access services and stigma towards mental illness in this age group is common. Efforts to promote adolescent help-seeking are essential for improving long-term mental health outcomes. Interventions designed to promote help-seeking in young people have focused on tackling stigma and other barriers. However, evidence suggests that the process of help-seeking is complex, with issues such as perceptions about the helper or service, availability of social support and likely outcomes all playing a role. There is also a lack of evidence-based measures of help-seeking and a lack of a decision-making guide for young people around help-seeking for mental health.
The current study aims to (i) develop a help-seeking decision aid tool which comprises a questionnaire-based measure of problem areas and an information feedback section, calibrated to the scores on the questionnaire, to enable young people with emerging mental health concerns to make informed decisions that aid earlier help-seeking. This will ensure that the tool itself is something that young people will utilise and will find supportive and helpful as they make decisions about their mental health; (ii) to pilot this tool within mental health and youth services alongside traditional measures of mental health and attitudes/behaviours related to help-seeking. The goal is to refine the tool and to establish its reliability and validity and ensure that the correct thresholds are set for levels of advice about help-seeking.
The tool will be developed through consultation with 10 young mental health service users and a piloting of the questionnaire and feedback section in a group of 200 young people with and without mental health problems. It is anticipated that the new tool will close the gap between service need and use by young people.
REC name
London - Dulwich Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/0646
Date of REC Opinion
29 May 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion