Nothing about us without us: civic activism as a mental health intervention

Research, including some that we have done, says other ways of improving young people's mental health might be just as good, if not better, than current mental health services. This project would explore another way. Does getting involved in 'civic activism' benefit young people (YP for short) who face many disadvantages? 'Civic activism' means doing community projects together that make not just our own individual lives better; but other YP's too. It involves developing what university researchers call our 'civic identity'. This involves feeling we belong to a community whether face to face, online or both -'glocal' communities is what academics call them. Our hunch is that creating belonging through civic activism could help us have positive identities. We think adolescence, a word used to describe the age group between 11-25 years old, is the ideal time for this support because we are developing identity as we move out of childhood. Research tells us that a strong and positive identity offers us direction in life and indicates that we matter in the world. All this is good for our current and future mental health. We know civic activism needs researching because in Blackpool we have already had success experimenting with a new way of supporting YP's mental health. This is based on an approach to resilience that is about 'Beating the Odds and Changing the Odds' which we call Boingboing Resilience. Our approach helps us build our own resilience as well as challenge the disadvantages that increase risks in the first place. This project would help us build on that work and share it with other YP and their adult supporters in Cornwall and Newham. These are other areas facing big challenges. We also want to learn from Newham and Cornwall's YP's work, including on climate change activism.
Our new and equal partnership of co-researchers come from different generations, professions and backgrounds; YP facing many disadvantages, adult community researchers, academics and mental health professionals.

What we will do
1. Our new research will survey 300 YP in Blackpool, Newham and Cornwall. This will test survey questions already available about YP's identity, civic activism and mental health. We will involve YP with learning difficulties because they often get left out.
2. We will do a 'literature review'. This means exploring what academics worldwide have already published on building YP's positive identities against the odds. This includes resilience, mental health and civic activism aimed at improving mental health.
3. We will organise and run a big meeting (a 'networking summit') and invite lots of people interested in our work and who have influence. Young co-researchers will present the literature review findings with adults and we will motivate people to do a new big bid together.
4. Blackpool, Brighton, Newham and Cornwall team members will plan and run 3 events using YP-friendly technologies, co-designed and co-led by YP, including YP with learning difficulties. We call these 'social learning spaces' (SLSs for short). They will find out about:
a) YP connecting with their communities' history
b) YP getting actively involved with their present communities, to get involved in making positive changes
c) YP actively contributing to their communities' future through civic activism.
5. With everyone's permission, we will record what happens in the SLSs. This will be written up as 'findings'. The findings will help us plan a civic activist approach (called an intervention framework). We will share work in academic publications but also in ways that more people can understand it, including on the internet. With more people joining in, together we will write a big bid so we can test our civic activism intervention framework.

The proposed project generates new research evidence for a potential alternative solution to current mental health (MH) interventions by exploring MH therapeutics embedded in the community. The proposed collaboration focuses on developing a new civic activist intervention framework that aims to impact on resilience and MH of adolescents using digital tools, such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). We argue that exploring and supporting different ways of engaging with communities considering the glocal aspects of these communities will promote identity formation which then acts as a protective mechanism for MH.
The proposed project aims to develop a civic activist intervention framework and pilot its research and evaluation tools in a 12 month period. In order to develop the intervention framework, first a systematic review will be conducted, on the relationship between identity, civic activism and MH, and on civic activist interventions building resilience. Second, we will bring together young people, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers to explore the systematic review findings and test VR and AR activities in four events in Newham (X2), Blackpool and Cornwall. These will bring empirical, technical, practice-based and YP's lived experience knowledge together in order to develop the intervention framework and build new collaborations.
The pilot study of this proposal has a cross-sectional design with the aim of testing the statistical properties of and associations between study variables including identity formation, MH, civic activism, and resilience. Three hundred adolescents (age 11-18) residing in Blackpool (n=100), Cornwall (n=100) and Newham (n=100) will be recruited for participation in an anonymised, one-off survey. Data analysis conducted in Mplus will explore the variation/distribution of associations between variables. The pilot study will also enable us to understand the acceptability and accessibility of the study tools.

Improving the mental health of young people facing multiple disadvantages (YPfMD) requires not only working with them but also optimising their socio-ecological environment. In practice, this suggests that such interventions should contain several interacting components, consider multiple outcomes and work with multiple stakeholder groups. Building on these suggestions, we aim to develop a civic activist intervention, which will create impact by working with and for YPfMD as both users and beneficiaries to change their perception of and connection with their communities, but also support them to shape these communities. In this project we propose two main economic and societal impacts. One is the outcome, the civic activist intervention framework which will have an immediate relevance to practitioners in the fields of child and adolescent development, mental health, youth and community, education and social justice. Second is that our work could trigger a shift in the UK and internationally from current largely top down models of interventions to more inclusive and holistic modelling. We have identified specific pathways to impact for different groups of beneficiaries:

Young People and Communities: This proposal takes a social justice approach emphasizing mechanisms to build resilience and strengthen young people's mental health, especially YPfMD. They will be integral to the project's research activities and will acquire research skills and knowledge that will enhance employment opportunities and build resilience. Exploring different ways of engaging with their communities will contribute to positive identity formation for the young co-researchers and encourage optimism for the future, help to increase self-society relationships and at the same time, disseminate research and challenge systems and structures that fuel inequalities - integral to Boingboing Resilience's 'Beating the Odds and Changing the Odds' aim.

Public Health Sector: The Mental Health Foundation estimates the cost of mental health problems in the UK to be £70-100 billion each year as outcomes for those involved in mental health services, particularly for people facing multiple disadvantages, remain poor. The proposed new civic activist intervention framework will be shared with public health leaders (brokered by the Directors of Public Health in Newham, Cornwall and Blackpool), as a route to embedding mental health support in communities which will contribute to improved health requiring less external funding.

Policy Developers and Commissioners: Youth, cultural, heritage and community organisations provide a variety of services, resources and activities conducive to social welfare and mental health. However they have been victims of significant income reductions, particularly in areas with the highest levels of deprivation. The outcome of this project will influence future policies and commissioning priorities, evidencing the need to radically change traditional hierarchical treatment models to resilience, asset-based and community interventions.

Countries in the DAC list of ODA Recipients will not have direct benefit from this project; however, the product of and learning from this project will contribute to mental health services globally, but especially in those countries who are additionally struggling with inequalities and socio-economic disadvantages. Linked Sustainable Development goals (SDG) agendas include poverty (SDG1), health and wellbeing (SDG3), and innovation (SDG9).