University of Southampton

Academic Institute

Corine DriessensPeter W SmithFiona Lacey

B3762

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.

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.

20/04/2021