"We Are Humans, and We Are People" - A Thematic Analysis Exploring the Disclosure and Help-Seeking Experiences of Young People Who Experience Voice-Hearing Within Mental Health Services in the UK.

Young people's engagement with online counselling remains an endemic obstacle faced by mental health services. This study utilises the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) framework to systematically explore the barriers and facilitators of young people's behavioural engagement with online webchat counselling. The current study defines behavioural engagement as any observable or active contribution by the young person in the webchat sessions, such as written verbalisation and self‐expression. Semi‐structured interviews with counsellors (n = 8) and open‐ended questionnaire data from 43 young people (aged 18–25 years) were gathered and then coded. Nine core themes were identified including communication difficulties, the safety of the webchat environment, absence of face‐to‐face communication, ambiguity in messages or pauses, reaching goals, optimism about outcomes, pre‐existing anxieties, mood or well‐being and wanting/not wanting to attend. Using the BCW framework, these themes were mapped to broad intervention functions and behaviour change techniques (BCTs) to provide suggestions to optimise young people's engagement with online counselling. These include the application of persuasive design features, the use of social strategies, increased counsellor training and greater personalisation of the online therapeutic approach. Future research can determine the effectiveness of these proposed strategies and BCTs to enrich the emerging engagement strategy field and the wider digital and mental health behaviour change literature.

Schools are often considered key sites for teaching young people about health. However, much learning around health and the body occurs through public pedagogies. Public pedagogy previously occurred mostly within families or through mediums such as the traditional media but, as digital spaces become ever more prominent within society, they are increasingly becoming influential avenues for learning. Research suggests that young people engage frequently with such digital spaces, spending increasing amounts of time online and valuing digital spaces for learning about health. However, there are concerns about young people's engagements with digital spaces, including those around screen time and sedentary behaviours, body dissatisfaction and cyberbullying. Whilst it is known that young people engage frequently with these digital spaces, the implications of their engagements, and their influence on young people's knowledge and behaviours, remain somewhat unclear. This chapter explores key digital spaces within which young people learn about health and their bodies, specifically wearable devices and self-tracking technologies and social media platforms. It highlights how young people use these digital spaces, what they access and learn as they do so and the resulting implications of such use. Subsequently, consideration is given to how young people's engagements with/in digital spaces may influence their experiences of, and engagements with, physical education (PE) in schools. Finally, it explores the ways in which PE teachers might make constructive links between the health-related learning occurring within digital spaces and that within PE and how they might help young people engage positively with such digital spaces.

BackgroundYoung people represent a vulnerable age group for mental health concerns and tend not to seek help. Exploring factors that influence young people's engagement in therapy and clinical outcomes is crucial. This study examined the relationships between young people's expectations, preferences, and actual experience of therapy on their clinical outcome, mental health care service use, and help‐seeking intentions. Gender and age effects were also explored.MethodsA quantitative prospective research method was utilised. Participants included a total of 228 young people aged 12 to 25 years who completed an initial survey on contact with a youth mental health service and 102 who completed an online follow‐up survey 2 months later.ResultsResults showed that young people's actual experiences of therapy and their preference to be personally committed to therapy were positively associated with the outcome variables. No significant associations were evident for initial expectations. No age or gender effects was found.ConclusionsThese initial findings suggest that initial expectations may not be well formed for youth and appear not to be relevant to young people's engagement or outcomes, and are less important than motivation and actual experiences. Youth‐focused mental health services need to ensure a positive early experience to promote early intervention and relapse prevention.

Recent studies about young people suggest a need to change the way researchers and policy-makers have traditionally understood the concepts of youth, transitions to adulthood, educational participation and the need for young people's voice to be heard. For many young women the taken-for-granted features of everyday life such as family, social, education and paid work are the priorities in their lives. Yet those priorities are frequently masked in large-scale studies, resulting in homogenising the diversity of young people's experiences and abstracting educational engagement from other parts of their lives. The study reported in this paper approaches the issue of young women's construction and defining of their identities in interaction with the broad institutional milieu that is part of their everyday experiences. This approach seeks to understand this lived experience through the use of photo-narratives. The paper explores a rationale for this approach in methodological and ethical terms. It allows for an exploration of the complexity of young women's multiple identities and the changing nature of young people's engagement with post-compulsory senior secondary education.

An approach to action research of innovative and disruptive socioecological understandings of young people's wellbeing, resilience, and engagement in middle school was piloted with a coalition of school principals, lead teachers, police, and community development professionals by an RMIT research team. This coalition was built around the Hume-Whittlesea Local Learning and Employment Network and the Whittlesea Youth Commitment Committee in outer northern Melbourne, Australia. Action research facilitated the collaborative design of interventions for reducing middle school disengagement. These were then expressed in logic model terms to guide implementation and subsequent evaluation. Logic models clarified how local innovations, situated in an authorizing environment, can develop promising practices that contribute to system reform. Our project involved characterizing ecologies of young people's engagement, resilience, and wellbeing as part of a place-based strategy.

The reporting of climate change issues through social media can influence young people's mental health and engagement. However, there has been little research undertaken directly with young people in relation to social and digital media's reporting of climate change, and how this is experienced by young people. This study aimed to explore the interface between climate change and social media reporting for young people. A two-stage iterative approach to recruitment and data collection included an initial qualitative stage (N = 28), consisting of open-ended questions about social media's reporting of climate change issues. The second stage (N = 23) included further open-ended questions and 10 Likert-Scale questions. Overall, 51 young people 16-25-years-old opted to take part (M = 11; F = 40). Descriptive statistics and an inductive data-driven content analysis are reported. Overall, 95% of the participants reported that they had the personal skills to cope with climate change reporting on social media. Most participants stated that coverage on the climate increased 'climate change anxiety' but not their overall mental health difficulties. A four-stage experiential process of observing social media's reporting of climate change, feeling emotionally affected by the reporting, critically apprising the content and feeling motivated to engage in climate change activism emerged from the content analysis. The participants discussed experiences of digital media, rather than solely social media, in their accounts. The participants recommended changes to climate change reporting and increasing access to education about climate change issues to reduce anxiety and enhance motivation for positive personal engagement. Involving young people in conversations and education about climate change were seen as protective factors for mental health and enablers for motivation. Motivation, agency and pathways for positive change were associated with hopefulness.

Background: Advance care planning for young people is relatively new in the UK. There is a lack of understanding about the engagement of young people in their own planning process, optimal timing of discussions and the facilitators and barriers to the engagement of young people. Aim: To explore the views and experiences of young people, their parents/carers and HCPs of the advance care planning process. Design: A qualitative study, using semi-structured interviews with young people, their parents/carers and healthcare professionals across four case series. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Participants: Fifteen participants were interviewed: young people (n = 2), parents/carers (n = 5) and healthcare professionals (n = 8). Results: Three themes were identified from the findings. Key findings related to barriers and facilitators of engaging young people in their own care planning were apparent in the following areas: misperception of terms; hierarchies of power in relationships; and a flexible and innovative organisational structure and culture. Conclusion: Participants expressed a variety of views and experiences of advance care planning. Advance care planning was thought to be best initiated by a consultant when the young person is in their mid-teens, their condition is stable, and before they transition to adult care. Engagement was also considered to be facilitated by appropriate communication, developing relationships prior to initiating advance care planning, and written support for everyone involved in the process. These factors were supported by training and education for healthcare professionals and a flexible and innovative structure and cultures of organisations.

PurposeThe primary objectives of this article are to systematically explore whether and how certain WeChat use motives could lead to bridging social capital, bonding social capital and civic engagement among young people.Design/methodology/approachThe data was collected from a large-scale online survey of 1208 young people in mainland China. Zero-order correlation analyses and structural equation modeling were carried out to examine the corresponding hypotheses.FindingsObtained findings show that WeChat use for informational and social motivations are positively associated with bonding and bridging social capital. Moreover, bonding social capital could mediate the relationship between WeChat usage for informational and relational motivations and civic engagement.Research limitations/implicationsTheoretically, this article underlines the unique social and technological affordances of WeChat by exploring mobile social media use and how it would contribute to the quality of democracy by fostering young people's engagement in civic life. Practically, bridging and bonding social capital play significant roles in enhancing young people's civic engagement, which could be the meaningful resource for mobile social media designers, managers and government officials.Originality/valueThese obtained outcomes underlined the vital role of these newly emerging communication technologies in fostering democratic involvement and production of social capital in contemporary socially networked society.

This chapter presents a new approach to civil society in the global context by focusing on youth civic engagement and local peacebuilding. The approach is particularly strong because it is based not only on empirical discussions of individual countries but also on a firm theoretical framework of the discussion of youth civic engagement and development issues. The quality of its research assists the reader to understand the contributions of young people from MENA and their civil society organizations' (CSOs) interventions and endeavours to encourage young people's grassroots engagement, activism, and resilience. A number of scholars, activists, community assessors, researchers, and evaluators have attempted to assess whether youth CSOs' actions are relevant to the promotion of young people's engagement in local networks. Young people, for example, use new communication technologies and social media platforms to raise the issue of their rights instead of established information networks.

Increased levels of wellbeing contribute to people being more productive, resilient, physically healthy and showing lower levels of mental illness. Using mobile apps to increase wellbeing in young people is becoming the method of choice. This study sought to critically appraise the current evidence base with regards to young people's (16-24 years of age) engagement with wellbeing apps. A systematic review of the literature and narrative synthesis was conducted to investigate users' characteristics and other potential engagement elements. A total of 11,245 titles, 160 abstracts and 68 full-text articles published between 2002 and 2021 were screened, of which 22 studies were included. Main themes/findings indicated that a user's engagement with wellbeing apps was dependant on the presence of strong identity elements, including motivation, mood and values; design elements such as meaningful rewards, short duration of studies and seamless automatic delivery with low contact with researchers; and being innovative and contextualised. The majority of the studies did not report outcomes by social determinants such as ethnicity, education and others. This research reflects on the need to consider participants' individuality when designing app mediated wellbeing interventions.

A major challenge for service providers is maintaining the attendance and engagement of young people in mental health services as without engagement recovery from mental illness is unlikely (Casey et al., 2016). This makes a focus on service engagement and recovery essential on many levels as the social and personal impacts of early psychosis can be considerable and far reaching (McGorry, 2015). Gaining a better understanding of youth early psychosis, the experiences of young people attending early psychosis community services, and the influences that work to keep them engaged is important for clinical and personal recovery, and a global challenge for social work practice. This study used a mixed methods methodology to identify the factors that contributed to consumers’ decision-making processes of whether or not to attend and engage with a community public early psychosis service. In doing so the role of social work in promoting autonomy and self-determination, while addressing the social and demographic factors that often impact on service engagement and recovery was also considered. The two phases in the study were underpinned by self-determination and ecological theory. The first phase involved an analysis of five years of data extracted from the Queensland Health Consumer Integrated Mental Health Application (CIMHA) pertaining to young people referred to the Early Psychosis Service on the Gold Coast. The second phase consisted of two consumer focus groups which aimed to explore themes that had been identified in the first phase as well as to investigate the key findings in more depth. Results suggested that social support, substance use, the therapeutic relationship and the transition period from hospital to community service were all influential in impacting on service engagement decisions. The findings inform future social work practice in the area of early psychosis, allowing interventions to be developed and established to encourage future service attendance and engagement in young people with lived experience.

Youth-onset type 2 diabetes among First Nations young people in northern Australia: a retrospective, cross-sectional study

The cultural contexts of home, school and community all have important parts to play in the music education of children, but at present in Australia, these three entities are insufficiently connected on a number of fronts, not the least being an understanding about the purpose(s) of young people's engagement with music. This paper puts forward two specific proposals for action aimed to help build linkages among the three cultural contexts and ensure young people's on-going engagement with music. These proposals, which call on the education sector to assume leadership for action, have implications for policy makers, school personnel, as well as parents, individual artists and community arts organisations.

Young people who offend appear stuck in a cycle of adverse experiences, low levels of social support and emotional skill deficits. Yet these factors have not been extensively researched with young people who offend. The current study aimed to develop the understanding of emotion recognition ability and perceived social support in young people who offend and to explore the relationship between these variables. A total of 50 young people who offend were recruited through three Youth Offending Teams and 50 age, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status and academically matched young people without a known offending history were recruited from a college and youth service in the same geographical area. All participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, a Facial Emotion Recognition Task, a Verbal Emotional Prosody Recognition Task and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Failing to support the hypotheses, statistical analyses failed to show that, relative to the controls, young people who offend had significantly higher levels of alexithymia, lower levels of perceived social support or lower ability to recognise others’ emotions. However, relative to the controls, young people who offend did show significantly lower ability to recognise fear through verbal prosody. Of particular interest, looked after status, which was more commonly reported among young people who offend (38%) than controls (4%), was the predominant factor associated with all outcome variables. Thus looked after status, rather than offending status in isolation, is more associated with difficulties in identifying and describing feelings, ability to recognise others’ emotions and levels of perceived social support. In addition, significant correlations were found between (1) alexithymia and perceived social support, (2) the ability to recognise others’ emotions and perceived social support and (3) the ability to recognise emotions from facial expressions and verbal prosody. Theoretical and clinical implications of the study findings are discussed and areas for future research are suggested.

Part I: Context and Systems Issues. Erooga, Masson, Children and Young People with Sexually Harmful or Abusive Behaviours: Underpinning Knowledge, Principles, Approaches and Service Provision. Masson, Policy, Law and Organisational Contexts in the United Kingdom: Ongoing Complexity and Change. Morrison, Henniker, Building a Comprehensive Inter-agency Assessment and Intervention System for Young People Who Sexually Harm: The Aim Project. Carson, Understanding and Managing Sexual Behaviour Problems in School Settings. Part II: Assessment and Planning. Grant, Assessment Issues in Relation to Young People Who Have Sexually Abusive Behaviour. Bankes, Placement Provision and Placement Decisions: Resources and Processes. Epps, Looking After Young People Who Are At-risk for Sexual Abuse Behaviour. Hackett, Towards A Resilience Based Intervention Model for Young People With Harmful Sexual Behaviours. Quayle, Taylor, Young People Who Sexually Abuse: The Role of the New Technologies. Part III: Interventions. Vizard, Usiskin, Individual Psychotherapy for Young Sexual Abusers of Other Children. O'Callaghan, Quayle, Print, Working in Groups with Young Men Who Have Sexually Abused Others. Scott, Telford, Similarities and Differences in Working with Girls and Boys Who Display Sexually Harmful Behaviour: The Journey Continues. Butler, Elliott, Stop and Think: Changing Sexually Aggressive Behaviour in Young Children. Cherry, O'Shea, Therapeutic Work with Families of Young People Who Sexually Abuse. Beckett, Risk Prediction, Decision Making and Evaluation of Adolescent Sexual Abusers. Part IV: Practitioner Issues. Hackett, The Personal and Professional Context to Work with Children and Young People Who Have Sexually Abused. Bankes, The Responsibility Avoidance Syndrome: Unconscious Processes in Practitioners' Therapeutic Work with Children and Young People Who Sexually Abuse.