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

MEN-MINDs 项目：共同创造变革，以改善边缘青少年男性的心理健康

• 批准号: MR/X002640/1
• 负责人: Nina Vaswani
• 金额: $ 38.83万
• 依托单位: University of Strathclyde
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FX002640%2F1
• 关键词: MEN; MINDs; Project; Co; producing

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.

青少年的心理健康和幸福感随着时间的推移而变得越来越差，COVID-19大流行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机点。虽然青少年女性往往被认为是在更高的比例内化障碍，如焦虑和抑郁症，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心理健康问题，还反映了其他因素，如寻求帮助的行为，心理健康支持的可用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的心理健康和福祉结果较差的风险更大。这可能是因为年轻男性不太可能寻求情感，心理或其他痛苦问题的帮助，或者可能是年轻男性的痛苦症状不同，并且不太被年轻人，父母或专业人士所认识。年轻男性也不太可能参加心理健康研究，因此研究人员和心理健康专业人员很难完全理解为什么存在这些差异。某些年轻男性群体也更有可能在社会中受到排斥或歧视，例如与法律发生冲突的年轻男性，认同为LGBTQ+或移民到英国的年轻男性。由于他们的生活经历，这些年轻人面临更大的心理健康结果不佳的风险，甚至不太可能满足他们的心理健康需求或参与研究。MEN-MINDs项目的主要目的是通过提高对我们如何有效地让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进青少年心理健康研究。MEN-MINDs项目旨在通过三个阶段的工作来解决这一知识差距。青年论坛将在开展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，他们将与我们的团队合作，作为共同研究人员，设计更有趣，更相关或更容易让年轻男性参与的研究新方法。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，对我们确定的弱势群体之一的60-80名年轻男性进行研究：与法律冲突; LGBTQ+（包括变性男性）;或移民。这将使我们能够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组织合作，实施这些变革，目的是改善年轻男性的服务提供体验和心理健康支持成果。该项目具有创新性，因为它试图了解青年人复杂的身份对他们的心理健康和寻求帮助行为的影响，因为将与来自受影响的三个群体的青年人共同制定新的研究方法。这项研究将填补有关青少年寻求帮助行为的信息空白，以及他们在讨论心理健康时所熟悉的研究方法。它将提供证据，帮助其他研究人员和服务提供者评估和了解三个最边缘化群体的男性身份和寻求帮助的行为。这也将导致改善心理健康研究，服务和政策的青少年男性。