Children and Young People's Mental Health Indicators
Work is ongoing to establish a set of national mental health indicators for children and young people. Find out about the feedback, current thinking, progress and the background to the work.
Scottish Government commitment to these indicators has been restated in the recently published Towards a Mentally Flourishing Scotland: Policy and Action Plan 2009-2011 (external link). 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 by September 2011.
A launch event was held in April 2008 in Glasgow. An initiation document (2008) outlining initial thinking for the work together with a document showing some possible frameworks (2008) for the indicators were shared with delegates at the event and informed debates around these issues. The event report (2008) 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.
The indicators will be structured within a framework under constructs (categories) of two types:
- High level constructs of mental health status – outcome measures
- Contextual constructs – covering the risk and protective factors and the consequences of mental health. These are structured into 5 domains: Individual, Family, Formal Learning Environment, Community and Structural.
A draft framework has been consulted on (March – June 2010) and the findings are informing the development of the final framework and indicator set.
The consultation consisted of:
- a large scale national event, 1st March 2010
- an electronic consultation (via a consultation document setting out the background to the work, the rationale (an overview of the evidence-base) for the constructs in the framework, a working understanding for each construct and possible indicators for illustration)
- commissioned consultation with specific groups of children and young people whose views, on what impacts on their mental health, are not adequately represented in the literature (see below for literature review)
Current and next steps
- aligning the work with wider policy initiatives
- scoping of data sources in Scotland, including an assessment of other national indicators
- identification of indicators which can be reported on using current data
- identification of data gaps and priorities for influencing data collection for new data collection. To date, the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) is to be included in the Scottish Adolescents Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey (SALSUS) 2010
Commissioned supporting work
- The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) has being validated for use with individuals aged 13 to 15, in the WAVES project. Information on this work and the final report are available on the Measuring Mental Wellbeing page. The main recommendation is that: WEMWBS is suitable for use at a population level to measure mental wellbeing in teenagers amongst those aged 13 years and over. It is safe to use in samples of over 100 people. The Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey has been approached for possible inclusion of WEMWBS so that data can be obtained on the mental wellbeing of S2 and S4 school children (mainly ages 13 and 15 years).
- A critical review of the literature on children and young people’s views of the factors that influence their mental health (2009). 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.
- Consultation with specific groups of children and young people on the draft children and young people's mental health indicators framework. This consulted with 9 groups of children and young people whose views were inadequately represented in or absent from the literature. 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@nhs.net.
Updated 19th August 2010