MEN-MINDs Project: Co-producing change for better mental health for adolescent young men at the margins

随着时间的推移，青少年的心理健康和幸福感越来越差，新冠肺炎疫情也对年轻人的心理健康产生了负面影响。青少年的心理健康被描述为处于危急关头。虽然青春期女性通常被认为有更高的内在性障碍，如焦虑和抑郁，但男性更有可能被诊断为行为障碍。这些诊断率不仅反映了潜在的精神健康问题，还反映了其他因素，如寻求帮助的行为、精神健康支持的可获得性以及服务如何与年轻人合作。年轻男性在自杀和药物使用等关键健康和福祉领域面临更大的心理健康和幸福结果不佳的风险。这可能是因为年轻男性不太可能在情感、心理或其他令人痛苦的问题上寻求帮助，也可能是因为年轻男性的痛苦症状不同，不太被年轻人、父母或专业人士认识到。年轻男性也不太可能参与心理健康研究，因此研究人员和心理健康专业人士很难完全理解为什么会存在这些差异。某些年轻男性群体也更有可能在社会上受到排斥或歧视，比如触犯法律的年轻男性，认为自己是LGBTQ+的年轻男性，或者移民到英国的年轻男性。由于他们的生活经历，这些年轻人心理健康状况不佳的风险更大，他们的心理健康需求得到满足或参与研究的可能性更小。男性思维项目的主要目的是通过提高对如何有效地让被边缘化的青少年男性参与心理健康研究以及服务如何改善对他们的支持的理解来推动青少年心理健康研究。男性思维项目旨在通过三个阶段的工作来解决这一知识差距。青年论坛(YPF)将在产生研究和与其他受众分享研究结果方面发挥核心作用。YPF将由9-12名青少年男性组成，他们将作为合作研究人员与我们的团队合作，设计更有趣、更相关或更容易让年轻男性参与的研究的新方法。我们将与其他研究人员分享这些研究工具，以便他们也可以在自己的研究中使用这些方法。然后，我们将使用我们的合作研究人员创建的研究工具，对60-80名年轻男性进行研究，他们属于我们确定的弱势群体之一：触犯法律；LGBTQ+(包括变性人)；或移民。这将使我们了解他们如何看待自己的男性身份，心理健康和幸福对他们意味着什么，以及政策或服务的变化将鼓励他们寻求心理健康方面的帮助。我们将与心理健康或其他支持机构合作，实施这些变化，目的是改善年轻男性提供服务的体验和心理健康支持的结果。该项目具有创新性，因为它试图了解年轻人的复杂身份对他们的心理健康和求助行为的影响，还因为将与来自三个受影响群体的年轻人共同制定新的研究方法。这项研究将填补有关青少年求助行为的信息空白，以及他们在讨论心理健康时所习惯的研究方法。它将提供证据，帮助其他研究人员和服务提供商评估和理解三个最边缘化群体的男性身份和求助行为。这也将导致针对青春期男性的心理健康研究、服务和政策的改善。

The mental health and wellbeing of adolescents has been getting worse over time and the COVID-19 pandemic has also had a negative impact on young people's mental health. The mental health of adolescents has been described as being at a crisis point. While adolescent females are often perceived to be at higher rates of internalising disorders such as anxiety and depression, males are more likely to be diagnosed with behavioural disorders. These diagnosis rates reflect not only underlying mental health issues, but also other factors such as help-seeking behaviours, the availability of mental health support and how services work with young people. Young males are at greater risk of poor mental health and wellbeing outcomes in key health and wellbeing areas such as suicide and substance use. This might be because young men are less likely to seek help for emotional, psychological or other distressing problems, or it might be that the symptoms of distress in young men are different and are less recognised by young people, parents or professionals. Young men are also less likely to take part in mental health research, so it is difficult for researchers and mental health professionals to fully understand why these differences exist. Certain groups of young men are also more likely to be excluded or discriminated against in society, such as young men who get in to conflict with the law, who identify as LGBTQ+, or who have migrated to the UK. These young men are at greater risk of poor mental health outcomes because of their life experiences, and are even less likely to have their mental health needs addressed or to participate in research. The primary aim of MEN-MINDs project is to advance adolescent mental health research by improving understanding of how we can effectively engage marginalised adolescent males in research on mental health and how services can improve support available to them.The MEN-MINDs project aims to address this gap in knowledge over three stages of work. A Young People's Forum (YPF) will have a central role in producing the research and sharing the findings with other audiences. The YPF will consist of 9-12 adolescent males who will work with our team as co-researchers to design new ways of doing research that are more interesting, relevant, or easier for young males to take part in. We will share these research tools with other researchers so that they can also use the methods in their own research. We will then use the research tools created by our co-researchers to carry out research with 60-80 young males who are in one of the vulnerable groups we identified: in conflict with the law; LGBTQ+ (including transgender men); or migrants. This will allow us to find out how they think about their masculine identities, what mental health and wellbeing means to them and what changes to policies or services would encourage them to seek help for mental health. We will work with mental health or other support organisations to implement these changes with the aim of improving both young males' experiences of service provision and the outcomes of mental health support. The project is innovative because it seeks to understand the impact of young people's complex identities on their mental health and help-seeking behaviours and because new methods of research will be co-produced with young people from the three groups affected. The study will fill a gap in information about adolescents' help-seeking behaviours and the methods of research they are comfortable with when discussing mental health. It will produce evidence to help other researchers and service providers to evaluate and understand masculine identities and help-seeking behaviours among three of the most marginalised groups. This will also lead to improvements in mental health research, services and policy for adolescent males.