My Story and Me: A feasibility study of a personalised public mental health intervention for young women 14 to 18 years

Aim: To address the Public Health Research call on: What interventions are effective to promote good mental health and wellbeing among young women aged 12-24? It builds on a six-month Application Development Award (NIHR135162), in which we developed a public mental health intervention, ‘My Story and Me’: 1) Watching a video of a young woman’s story, created by young women from different ethnic, LGBTQIA+, and neurodivergent groups, including those from multiply marginalised groups to represent the multiple intersectional influences through which identity and marginalisations are constructed. 2) Creating your own story. Participants then record (speech, video, text, image) answers to three questions, mirroring those in the pre-recorded videos: ‘Who am I? What is My Mental Health Story? How would I Like to be Supported?’. Only the young woman creating their story will have access to it. There will be guidance on how to talk about your story with others and where to find support. It will help young women to understand and talk about their own mental health stories by hearing the stories of other similar young women, empowering them to seek support at an early stage. It is needed given the rising levels of mental health difficulties for young women and girls and fits with policy priorities. It addresses gaps in research and practice and is inclusive of margainlised groups. We have robust safeguarding plans for contributors to the platform and research participants. Research (RQs) and methods: We shall conduct an 18-month uncontrolled feasibility study to build to a future randomised trial. There are 5 RQs: RQ 1) What is the optimum setting in which to conduct the trial? RQ 2) How should parameters for the sample size calculation be refined? RQ 3) What is a meaningful difference in the primary outcome measure? RQ 4) What is the acceptability of ‘My Story and Me’ and a trial? RQ 5) What is needed for the economic evaluation? We will recruit 120 young women across 2 secondary schools, 2 Further Education colleges, and 2 community organisations. We will collective 4 types of information: 1. A site log to record the research processes and barriers and facilitators; 2. Baseline and 7-month follow up outcome measures for young women and girls; 3. Activity and engagement data through ‘My Story and Me’; 4. Interviews with 15-18 young women in each of the 3 settings (i.e., 45-54 in total) and 10-12 staff per setting (i.e., 30-36 in total). In the interviews, we will discuss what changes young women have experienced using ‘My Story and Me’ and what types of changes they think would be meaningful and realistic. We will use this to work with our Young People’s Advisory Group and Co-I group to inform a meaningful effect size for our sample size calculation. We will examine how the study operates in, and differences in socio-demographic characteristics and outcome measures across, the 3 settings to inform which one(s) to pursue for the full trial. We will test recruitment methods and rates, retention, data collection (including health economics), and acceptability of the trial. We will gather in-depth intervention acceptability data from the platform and interviews. The findings will help us to develop the optimum approach to conducting a full trial, and future research funding will be sought from NIHR (e.g., NIHR PHR, NIHR Health Technology Assessment).