Open Doors to Support: Strengthening adolescent agency in mental health help-seeking

Project outline

This project seeks to promote young people’s access to mental health support in secondary schools in England. By working with adolescents (aged 11–16), parents/carers, and mental health professionals, we will engage whole school communities to understand the challenges related to consent and confidentiality, both of which have been highlighted as important concerns for young people seeking help. We aim to co-create ethical solutions and community guidance to enable more adolescents to find support when they need it.

In England, one in five young people struggle with their mental health, a figure that has significantly increased over the last 5-10 years. While schools can be a vital source of early support, many students are reluctant to seek help. Adolescents express significant fears that what they say about their mental health will be shared with others in the school, or their parents. Research shows that these worries often stop students from seeking help altogether, leaving them without the support they need and removing the possibility for early intervention.

Working in close collaboration with adolescents, teachers, parents/carers, mental health professionals, and policymakers the research will have four stages. First, we analyse school mental health consent and confidentiality policies in England, in connection to data from the large-scale OxWell Student Survey, to understand their relationship with help-seeking and agency. We will then investigate the needs and attitudes of students, parents/carers and school staff through interviews and youth-led group discussions in schools that take distinct approaches to consent and confidentiality in mental health services. Based on these findings, young people, alongside parents/carers and audiovisual professionals, will co-create accessible guidance in the form of videos addressing real-life experiences and challenges. Finally, the guidance will be distributed nationally alongside a survey to assess its usefulness and acceptability, followed by a wider co-designed campaign to promote its use.

We hope the project helps create school communities which draw young people toward accessible, flexible, and appropriate support, improving adolescents’ mental health and positively shaping the trajectory of their lives.