Mental health implications of being labelled a threat to society during adolescence among diverse groups

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he prevalence of mental health problems among adolescents in Englandis 14% [1]. In adults, there are clear and unexplained differences in thetypes of mental health problems experienced by white and black people;for instance, rates of psychosis are higher among black people [2]. Amongyoung people, though, research suggests similarities in mental healthproblems between black and white youths, despite, on average, higherprevalence of risk factors among black adolescents [3]. Understandingethnic differences in the development of mental health problems duringadolescence and into adulthood is a key focus of REACH (Resilience,Ethnicity and AdolesCent Mental Health), the research group I've beenworking in for the last 2 years.Negatively stigmatising people from an early age has adverse impactsand we know this to be the case even if the label is unfounded. As anexample, from educational psychology, "teachers and parents are morelikely to perceive disabilities in and hold lower educational expectations forlabelled adolescents than for similarly achieving and behaving adolescentsnot labelled with disabilities" [4]. My proposal is to produce is a novelperspective on how the process of labelling young people as a potentialthreat to society affects their mental health, and whether these effectsdiffer by ethnic groups and among migrants. The theoretical frameworkbehind labelling theory involves an individual receiving a label that they didnot choose for themselves and assumes that, although an outcome canstem from other causes, once an individual has been defined as deviant,problematic or dangerous "they face new problems that stem from thereactions of self and others to negative stigma that are attached to thatlabel" [5, 6, 7]. There is a plethora of research in adults on thecriminogenic processes triggered by labelling [5] and, separately, thestigma associated with mental health problems [8]. But there is very littleresearch, locally and globally, on the mental health implications of beinglabelled a threat to society at an early age.