Young people’s mental health – A recent study of mental health treatments in young people has revealed that a majority of widely offered interventions fail to offer long-term solutions for many common diagnosis.
The reasons why are enlightening if you have any interest in children’s mental health...
The Public Health England venture, which covered over 113 different interventions aimed at ages four to 18, was commissioned to help policy makers and health officials plan effective treatment pathways for young people. In a nutshell, it aims to show what works, and what doesn’t.
But, first, it highlights the grim state of young people’s mental health in the UK, with the statistic that one in eight children in the five-15-year-old bracket currently have a diagnosable condition. That’s about a million people.
They also rightly pointed out that these issues can have hugely negative consequences for outcomes later in life – something we experience regularly with our clients at The Thrive Programme when they explain they root cause of their poor mental health.
Back to the study. Public Health England picked through over 19 systematic reviews, which considered 113 treatments between them, and did their best to ascertain what really works and what doesn’t.
So, ignoring what doesn’t work – just eight interventions from 113 warranted further study – and picking out what does have an impact…what’s left?
“On the whole, there were many more interventions that operated at the individual level than at the school or family level and no interventions were identified that operated at the community level…” states the study.
Therein sits a clue as to why many of the interventions failed. Simply put, many are short-term individual interventions based on outdated, unhelpful concepts with little evidence to back them up.
This figures. We know that one-to-one talking therapies such as CBT are not reliable or effective ways of helping someone overcome issues such as depression, anxiety or phobias.
But, helpfully, the study lists eight interventions that could be promising and had data to back them up. And, from these eight interventions, they identify the following commonalities:
- Provided in schools
- Offered in group setting (often a class)
- Offered over a series of weeks from 10–24 often in 30 minutes to 1 hour
- Led by professionals (teachers or psychologists)
- Skills-based with strong emphasis on experiential practice in situ
- Often include element of fun and enjoyble practice experiences
The study also picked out factors that led to significant success rates amongst interventions offered to parents to help their own children:
- Provided online
- Supported by professional input
- Involve skills-based practice.
These data-driven lists show that old-fashioned talking or one-to-one therapies are not effective ways of helping young people.
Instead, they demonstrate that engaging, constructive learning around mental health in a comfortable setting, delivered in a community environment (i.e. groups or schools), is the future of prevention and cure amongst young people.
This is also what we do at The Thrive Programme and Bounce, our Thrive In Schools project. Through engaging, evidence-led learning, we educate young people and their parents or carers about how their mental health really works and how they can make it work for them, not against.
The programmes are delivered in a community setting, or with families and a consultant, and they give the parents and child an effective treatment pathway for many mental health issues.
Interested in learning about how The Thrive Programme can be delivered in your school or community or to your family? Contact us today for a free initial consultation. Young people’s mental health.
