Suicide and self-harm in young people

Initial suggestions covered:

• The role of biology and genetics in self harm and suicide , and how this linked to risk in families

• Cultural differences around perceptions of seeking support for self harm and suicide, for example in different countries, and in under served communities

• Stigma and support, for example how it affected young people if they can’t talk about the issue at home, whether different age groups are more or less believed when they express intentions.

They were themed into “origins”, “support”, “cultural differences”, and “ideation”.The Team chose to focus on a particular Outcome of interest, around coping and help seeking. They asked David to explore what evidence existed on different interventions in terms of impacting coping styles and help-seeking behaviour.

The co-developed evidence mapping question asked:

What are the effects of interventions for young people at risk of suicide and self harm on coping styles and help seeking behaviours?

The evidence map showed a lot of primary research on the topic of interventions for self-harm in adolescents , but very little looked at coping and little work asking young people about how they coped. This inspired the group to look specifically at coping and what young people themselves would find helpful. 

Whilst evidence mapping was happening, the Teams talked about different methods. The group had experience and interest in a range of methods, including ‘story completion’ which is a qualitative method to help understand participant expectations, longitudinal surveys (meaning data collected repeatedly over time to look at changes and developments), and randomised controlled trials (where an intervention is tested to determine if it improves things for people who receive it.)

The team was able to combine these by deciding to use surveys and story completion to understand young peoples’ experiences, then use this to inform co-design of an intervention to help, which would then be tested in a randomised controlled trial.  The Team talked about the importance of safeguarding throughout, and working ‘alongside’ existing coping methods, not trying to remove them. They also talked about wanting to include diverse young people, of different ages and from different backgrounds.

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.