Developing a school-based, transdiagnostic, preventative intervention for adolescent mental health

在青春期，我们学会了更加独立，并形成重要的新关系。这也是一个时候，许多可悲的发展心理健康问题。在过去十年中，青少年心理健康问题的发生率有所上升。作为一个社会，我们已经开始对心理健康斗争和我们解决这些问题的责任更加开放。然而，我们往往等到有人出现问题才采取行动。这种情况需要改变。心理健康问题令人痛苦，扰乱了患者的生活。我们的项目是所有关于与年轻人一起工作，以更好地了解我们如何能够有效地预防心理健康问题出现之前。以前的许多研究都过于关注诊断标签，而很少关注表面之下的东西。新的研究向我们表明，两个关键因素对于使年轻人更容易经历心理健康问题至关重要：-青少年处理情绪的方式-例如，有些人比同龄人更容易将中性情况视为威胁，其他人在管理或控制他们的情绪或阅读他们的身体信号方面有困难。- 社会关系的困难，特别是与他们的同龄人群体。我们认为，重要的是要研究这两个主题一起，因为它们是在深刻的重要方式连接。令人惊讶的是，过去的研究人员将它们分开研究。然而，我们如何解释和管理我们的情绪会影响我们的社会关系，因为它们会影响我们的行为和关系。同样，我们的关系也会影响我们如何解释控制或管理我们的情绪。情感和关系之间的这种双向联系是这项研究的核心。我们会发展一项新的以学校为本的介入措施，以预防青少年出现精神健康问题。我们的创新方法解决了情感和社会关系之间的关键联系。我们将把两个非常不同但已确立的战略结合起来，以支持年轻人，一个侧重于培养情感技能，另一个解决年轻人的关系。虽然每种方法都有其优点，但将它们结合起来将为年轻人提供“两全其美”，为他们提供识别和调节情绪的技能，并帮助他们了解情绪如何影响他们的社会关系。但也清楚社会关系如何影响情绪。虽然有许多倡议支持学校的青少年心理健康，但我们对这些干预措施如何发挥作用还不够了解，即，例如，推动积极变化的"机制"是什么？我们的研究还将促进我们对情绪和关系如何随着时间的推移相互影响，影响心理健康和福祉的理解。为了开发这种新的干预措施，我们将与年轻人密切合作，创造情绪处理方面的引人入胜的训练练习，丰富与年轻人生活相关的社交练习，并与学校的同龄人一起练习，由年轻人与经验丰富的从业者一起共同推动。我们与年轻人的初步协商表明，这些领域和这种方法与他们的日常生活密切相关。我们致力于确保我们获得的新知识能够广泛传播。我们将与年轻人和表演艺术家合作，开发引人注目的短片，播客和信息图表，不仅教育人们了解青少年心理健康的科学，而且还为年轻人，教师和家长提供了解情感和社会关系的实用技巧。这些将传达这样一种观点，即心理健康问题不仅仅是个人或环境中的问题。相反，我们希望帮助人们理解关系和情感是如何紧密相连的，并且是幸福的核心。

During adolescence we learn to be more independent and form important new relationships. It is also a time when many sadly develop mental health problems. In the last decade, rates of adolescent mental health problems have risen. We, as a society, have started to be more open about mental health struggles and our responsibility to tackle them. Yet, too often, we wait until someone has developed problems before we act. This needs to change. Mental health problems are distressing and disrupt the lives of those who suffer from them. Our project is all about working together with young people to better understand how we can effectively prevent mental health problems before they emerge. Much previous research has been too focused on diagnostic labels and paid too little attention to what is under the surface. New research is showing us that two key things are critical for making young people more vulnerable to experiencing mental health difficulties:- The way that adolescents process emotions - for example some are more likely to see neutral situations as threatening than their peers, others have difficulties in managing or controlling their emotions or reading their bodies' signals about what they are feeling. - Difficulties in social relationships, particularly with their peer group.We think that it is important to study both topics together as they are connected in profoundly important ways. Surprisingly researchers in the past have looked at them separately. Yet, how we interpret and manage our emotions influences our social relationships, because they affect how we behave and relate. Likewise, our relationships affect how we interpret control or manage our emotions. This two-way connection between emotion and relationships is at the heart of this study. We will develop a new school-based intervention to prevent mental health problems in adolescents. Our innovative approach addresses the crucial links between emotions and social relationships. We will bring together two very different but established strategies to support young people, one that focuses on training emotional skills and one that addresses young people's relationships. While each has its advantages, combining them will give young people 'the best of both worlds', providing them with skills in recognising and regulating emotions and helping them understand how their emotions affect their social relationships. But also making it clear how social relationships can impact emotions. While there have been many initiatives to support adolescent mental health in schools, we do not know enough about how these interventions work, i.,e., what are the 'mechanisms' that drive positive change? Our research will also advance our understanding of how emotions and relationships affect each other over time, impacting mental health and well-being.To develop this new intervention, we will collaborate closely with young people to create engaging training exercises in emotional processing, enriched with social exercises that are relevant for young people's lives, and practiced with peers at school, co-facilitated by young people working alongside an experienced practitioner. Our initial consultation with young people indicated that these areas and this approach are highly relevant to their daily lives. We are committed to ensuring that new knowledge we gain reaches a wide audience. We will work together with young people and performing artists to develop compelling short films, podcasts and infographics that not only educate people about the science of adolescent mental health, but also gives practical tips for understanding emotions and social relationships for young people, teachers and parents. These will convey the idea that mental health problems are not just a problem within an individual or in their environment. Instead, we want to help people understand how relationships and emotions are deeply interconnected and together are central to well-being.