How do schools prevent emerging issues with body image?

This PhD project will explore the transition from primary to secondary school as a key life experience that may influence body image, as well as investigating opportunities for early intervention at this life stage.

Schools play an important role in the lives of young people. Most young people spend much of their time at school and attend the same setting over several years. Recent policy proposals have advocated increasing the role of schools in the provision of mental health services. This has resulted in a novel approach with the implementation of school-based mental health support teams (MHSTs). Negative self-perceptions and self-image are a pervasive and distressing part of many mental health difficulties. A particular aspect of self-image that has an established link with mental health is body dissatisfaction (Dallas et al 2017). Body dissatisfaction encroaches on young people's mental health with elevated levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms (Sharpe et al 2018; Neves et al 2017). It is important to identify risk factors that that may influence body image, as well as establishing opportunities for intervention. Successful intervention of body image would allow for early improvement of a distressing experience, with the potential for prevention of future mental health problems.

This project is a collaboration between the University of Sussex (UoS) and the Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust (SPFT), specifically the West Sussex School Based Mental Health Support Team (MHST) Research Clinic.