Helping young people to bounce back from anxiety and depression: Leveraging socialsupport networks in the local community

Anxiety and depression in young people are common and disabling, and the continueduncertainty about the future over the course of the pandemic may further increase thenumber of cases. Helping young people with mental distress is an urgent UK governmentpriority to improve the health and wellbeing of the nation going forward. However, youngpeople with emotional difficulties can struggle with accessing mental health support. Analternative or additional source of support that young people may be able to draw on can befound in their social networks. Exemplifying this, social prescribing schemes offer a range ofprogrammes through local organisations, where young people can identify activities that suittheir needs and preferences, while also having the crucial opportunity to connect with others.Importantly, social prescribing may be a more viable alternative to accessing and engagingwith services for young people where help-seeking is complicated by lower mental healthliteracy and stigma. Despite this potential of social prescribing, there are few frameworks forunderstanding why these schemes benefit young people and whether their therapeuticbenefits lie in shaping social support networks. There is also a paucity of data on theirfeasibility, acceptability, and potential effectiveness in reducing symptoms in youth withanxiety/depression. We propose to address these important gaps by working with community organisations andfamilies participating in the Multi-Agency Collective (MAC) project, a social prescribingscheme, coordinated by the HeadStart team in the London Borough of Newham. To better understand why social prescribing works and if it works by enhancing socialsupport, we will run a mixture of individual interviews and focus groups with communityorganisation representatives ("link workers") who work directly with young people in theseprogrammes. Qualitative analysis will explore commonalities and differences in practiceacross the different programmes, to identify mechanisms of change. To assess the feasibilityand acceptability of social prescribing and their potential in reducing symptoms for youngpeople with anxiety and/or depression, information will be gathered from a consecutiveseries of 100 young people and their parents/carers enrolled to the MAC. We will record thetotal numbers eligible, those who participate, and those who complete their placements. Toassess acceptability we will ask young people and their parents/carers to complete aquestionnaire, focusing on overall helpfulness in managing symptoms, their enjoyment,whether they would recommend it to a friend, and aspects they liked/disliked. To assesspotential effectiveness in reducing symptoms, a diverse subset of 20 young people will besurveyed weekly on anxiety/depression symptoms. Analysis and modelling of these data willdetermine the proportion of young people in our sample whose symptoms improve over thecourse of the intervention. These data will lay the ground work for future refinement and evaluation of social prescribingefforts for mental distress in young people. Therefore, continuous engagement indissemination is essential. In addition to 3 planned academic publications, we will produce anon-academic report and infographic describing the findings to partnering stakeholders,London Borough of Newham Directors and Public Health England.