Children and Young People's Mental Health Indicators
Work is ongoing to establish a set of national indicators for children and young people. Scottish Government commitment to these has been restated in the recently published Towards a Mentally Flourishing Scotland: Policy and Action Plan 2009-2011. The work will follow a similar course to that for the adult mental health indicator set. It is planned that the final indicator set for children and young people will be published in 2011.
The work was launched at an event on 21st April 2008 in Glasgow. An initiation document outlining initial thinking for the work together with a document showing some possible frameworks for the indicators were shared with delegates at the event and informed debates around these issues. The event report summarises the event and the feedback from delegate discussion around specific issues posed to delegates.
This feedback has informed discussions with the expert advisory group for the Children and Young People's Mental Health Indicators programme. This has led to the revision of some of the thinking outlined in the initiation document. Current thinking, progress and the background to the work are laid out in Children and Young People's Mental Health Indicators: Background Briefing May 2009.
Commisioned supporting work
* The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) is being validated of for use with individuals aged 13 to 15. This research project is due to be completed october 2009. Information on this work and the outputs are available on the Measuring Mental Wellbeing page
* A critical review of the literature on children and young people’s views of the factors that influence their mental health. This assessed both published peer-review journal articles and grey literature since 1999. Findings are being used to inform the framework for the indicators as well as the indicators themselves.
Contact for the indicators work
If you have comments on the indicators project or require further information please contact Jane Parkinson – jane.parkinson@health.scot.nhs.uk.
Last updated 24th September 2009