Improving mental health literacy among children and young people aged 12-14 in the United Kingdom
What were we trying to do?
We wanted to co-adapt and extend a pre-existing interactive tool called IMPeTUs, making it suitable for use in the UK. Its aim would be to improve mental health literacy and self-management skills for UK-based young people aged 12-14.
Mental health literacy is the ability to navigate mental health disorders, knowing how to recognise problems such as depression, who to turn to when experiencing these problems, how to treat them, and how to prevent them.
The original intervention was an immersive story-based digital game where young people played two characters facing mental health challenges. The ‘Improving mental health literacy in children’ research team wanted to adapt the information in the intervention to make it relevant to young people in the UK. An additional intervention chapter was planned, as well as a training toolkit for facilitators, educational information for parents and a strategy for encouraging people to use the digital game.
Why was this important?
It’s estimated that 10-20% of children and adolescents are affected by mental health problems worldwide. Depression becomes more likely after puberty and more than half of adolescents who have experienced a depressive episode will become depressed again within five years.
It has been proven that young people with low levels of mental health literacy have higher chances of developing moderate to severe depression. So, an important outcome of improving mental health literacy is to reduce the number of young people developing moderate or severe depression.
How did we do it?
A group of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) members were involved in the co-design and testing of the intervention and evaluations took place which showed the intervention was accessible, would be acceptable to young people and could be implemented.
Once the intervention was co-adapted, it was tested in education and community settings. Young people were asked to use the intervention and to feedback after three months. Facilitators, young people and professionals were asked about their experiences of using and delivering the intervention.
A larger study was then designed to explore the costs and impacts of the intervention.
Findings
The main findings from this study were:
- Young people liked the app and found it useful for supporting their mental health.
- There were no negative outcomes reported.
- The storylines reflected young people’s experiences and participants identified with the central characters.
- The young people identified a range of improvements to the digital application which focus on making it more interactive.
- It is possible to deliver and evaluate our intervention in community sites but more work is required to develop better ways of testing the intervention in schools.
Who did we work with?
Funding information
This work was funded by the NIHR Invention for Innovation programme (i4i) through the Connect & Children and Young People’s Mental Health call.
More information
Programme Manager
Gill Rizzello
gill.rizzello@manchester.ac.uk