Agency, Social Identity & Justice in Mental Health: A Collaboration with Young People, Clinicians & Academics across Philosophy, Ethics & Neuroscience

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The field of youth mental health presents particular challenges and opportunities. The majority of mental health difficulties emerge before the age of 25 and this is also the time of greatest opportunity for positive change in terms of personal, social and neurological development. Young peoples' sense of agency and social identity is developing. Healthcare interactions offer access to treatment and support. From our consultations with young people, we are aware how disenfranchised they can feel, when supports and services seem to speak a different language that does not involve them, address their needs, respect their agency and treat them fairly. Not being involved and treated as an active agent impacts negatively on young peoples' wider sense of agency and identity, which in turn effects their relationships, school and transition to employment during this critical developmental phase. It is therefore crucial to study the consequences of mental healthcare interactions for young peoples' wider sense of agency and social identity in their lives, i.e., how young people feel helped or harmed by these social interactions. This requires a greater understanding both of helpful interactions to improve outcomes for young people and also of harmful interactions in order to avoid harm and mitigate risk. Ultimately, we are interested in how young people feel enabled to be active agents in their care and identify solutions they feel will help rather than harm them.We have three aims in this project. Firstly, we will conduct a launch workshop to establish a new collaboration involving young people, their families, clinicians and academics across philosophy, ethics (the study of what is right and wrong), psychology and neuroscience (the study of the brain) to investigate agency, identity and justice in youth mental health. Secondly, we will (i) analyse verbal and non-verbal communication in 16 mental healthcare encounters involving young people to examine how agency is fostered or thwarted in these encounters and (ii) test novel interview methods with 25 young people to identify their preferences on how best to interview them about their experience of agency and justice. Thirdly, we will conduct a further 3 workshops to develop a new study idea to investigate the effect on the developing brain of high and low agency in social interaction.