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Our 鈥楽o What?鈥� seminar series aims to build the bridge between evidence and practice in child mental health by asking "So what does this mean?" in response to research findings, project outcomes and the work of our collaborators.鈥�聽

In June, we were joined by an audience to discuss research about how we can accurately understand and represent mental health. Leveraging the power of science and data to improve and embed the measurement of children鈥檚 mental health and wellbeing is one of five focus areas of .听听

Our chair, Professor Jess Deighton, opened the seminar by outlining some common conceptualisations of mental health and wellbeing. Jess questioned the distinction that鈥檚 often drawn between internalising and externalising difficulties, for instance. She suggested that:聽

鈥渨hat we are seeing is perhaps just an underlying experience of psychological distress experienced by young people. And what we actually see in terms of symptoms and behaviours might just be how they express that distress.鈥澛�

Equally important is how we capture mental health difficulties. Should measures focus more on distress to help us understand who needs support? Are measures missing important aspects of wellbeing such as sleep and functioning? And, crucially, are they accessible to all children and young people?聽聽

This question led us into our first presentation. Professor Julian Edbrooke-Childs and Victoria Christodoulides introduced the . As Julian explained, we consistently hear feedback from young people that sometimes, the text-based measures we use can be hard to understand and out of step with young people鈥檚 experiences. They are not always engaging, accessible and inclusive. The team were interested in how they could ask young people about their mental health but in a way that doesn't rely on text, and they set out to develop an image-based measure.听

Young co-researchers played a key role development of the image-based measures. They co-created a character called Animi who helps demonstrate some of the complex concepts the questionnaire asks about. The user of the measure can move sliders in response to a set of questions, visually representing where they feel are at. Another key characteristic of the measures is that young people can personalise the audio settings, subtitles and visual look and feel.听听

Next steps include asking young people for further feedback, including in real-time while they鈥檙e using the measure to understand whether they're making sense of the measure in the way intended.听

Next, we heard from clinical psychologists Ro Rossiter and Jeni McElwee who told us about two collaborative projects under the banner of 鈥榓ccessible approaches鈥�. Ro and Jeni emphasised the importance of promoting equity and justice, and reducing inequality, in the work we do.听听

One of the projects Ro and Jeni shared was Feedback and Outcome Measures. It involved working with children and young people who have learning disabilities and/or neurodevelopmental conditions. The project team used a wide range of evidence gathering methods including literature reviews, dataset interrogation and interviews with children, young people, parents and carers, and practitioners.听

The main recommendations that came out of the evidence gathering were:聽

• set goals that are meaningful聽

• actively seek feedback in a variety of ways for involvement in goal setting and review聽

• choose and use outcome measures and methods with a clear purpose.听

Ro and Jeni also spoke about the Goal Based Outcomes project, which you can learn more about by visiting the and by watching the .听

After the presentations, we heard reflections from Anna Freud champions. In relation to the image-based measures, Young Champion Pavan said:聽聽

鈥淚t's definitely different to anything that I've seen that's been used. I think as someone who has used the previous sort of measures this would definitely be very interesting and I think can be really beneficial to some people.鈥澛�

Next was a panel discussion in which our speakers, Young Champion and Parent Champion took questions from the virtual floor and offered further reflections on the learning shared.听听

Watch a .听听

To hear about the next in our So What seminar series, .听