Access to mental health support in schools

This Team combined two areas of interest: mental health support in schools, and challenges young people face accessing support. The themes of the original questions expressed were around barriers to accessing support, how to communicate about support, and also questions about access to different treatments.

The Team discussed differences in access across different cultural groups. This was a theme throughout Youth LIVES, with young people particularly focusing on diversity and whether different people (from different backgrounds, communities, or with different experiences) had different needs, whether these needs were recognised, and how they impacted on the effectiveness of help provided.

The co-developed evidence mapping question asked:

What evidence exists on cultural barriers to accessing mental health services in schools and what interventions exist to overcome them?

The Evidence Mapping revealed that the outcome of interest to the Team, i.e. accessing services, was rarely looked at. A small number of studies had looked at referrals to services, but the others looked at symptoms such as depression and anxiety scores rather than if and how young people tried to access help. 

The search was designed to look at whether research included or focused on young people from minority backgrounds, but found little reported on this group despite the studies in general being quite large. It was also quite hard to include this in the search terms, as there aren’t agreed terms used.

Given these gaps, the team decided that a survey of experiences would be part of their design. This would be followed up by focus groups and participatory work to reflect on the barriers identified and think about what would help. Finally, there would be a feasibility study to actually test out the suggested intervention, where they anticipated working with a school to implement and evaluate the support. They also wanted to explore the perspectives of the different groups who would have insight into who struggles to access help and why. This would include parents and carers, teachers and staff, staff working in local mental health services, and clinical psychologists.

The purpose of this proposal is to share the priorities and ideas of young people with the research community, with a hope that these ideas are taken forward and youth voices embedded in future mental health research. Please feel free to use the ideas presented here to support future research bids, we would just ask that you let the Youth LIVES team know, and acknowledge the Youth LIVES project in any bids and papers published. Additionally, we would strongly recommend the use of participatory approaches with young people in future research inspired by these proposals, and can share details of your project with the young people involved in Youth LIVES if you are interested in working with them.