MENTAL HEALTH INTERVENTION FOR YOUNG POPULATION IN UK
Table of Contents
Introduction    3
Concepts and Principles for the Modern Public Health Underpinning Interventions    3
Identification of the Key Elements of the Intervention and its Evaluation    5
Review of Evidence Supporting Intervention and Effectiveness    7
Evaluation of the Intervention and Recommendations    8
Conclusion    10
References    12
Introduction
Mental health is known to be a public health challenge. Mental illness in UK, is one of the sources leading to a burden of diseases in UK. In UK, mental illness has the highest prevalence, breath of impact and persistence. According to the Mentalhealth.org. UK, it is reported that 50% of the mental health problems among the population of UK appeared at the age of 14 years, while 75% of the problem arose at the age of 24 years (Mental Health Foundation. 2020). Around 10% of the young people and children in between the age of 5 years to 16 years have been diagnosed with mental illness. 70% of the children were suffering from mental illness but were not provided with appropriate interventions in coping up with the challenges at an early stage.
Mental illness, in many cases, is closely associated with unemployment, poor physical health, low income and deprivation (Cahill and Egan 2017). Often mental illness involves social and human cost, including the economic cost. The clinical engagement has been commissioning for the public mental health so that the quality, safety and effectiveness of care can be provided for the mental health patient. The cost-effective interventions help in the prevention of mental illness and also help in reducing the disease burden. In the current study, the health intervention through school-based mental health promotion and prevention of mental illness will be explored in improving the mental health of the young population in UK.
Concepts and Principles for the Modern Public Health Underpinning Interventions
Schools in UK have been delivering public health education as well as providing services in terms of the immunisation programme, sex education and health care. Similarly, schools also provide provisions for mental health services and specifically addresses the academic impacts of the difficulties faced by the young population in terms of mental health. They promote mental health and also provide prevention and treatment (Punukollu, Burns and Marques, 2020).
According to the Royal College of Psychiatrist, most of the health inequalities in England has been recognised in terms of mental health challenges as it is observed that the physical health inextricably dependants on the mental health condition. Hence poor mental health condition among the young population in UK leads to a public health condition like alcohol misuse, smoking and obesity.
These behaviours have a result on cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular condition among the young population in UK (Fazel, Garcia and Stein 2016). It has been observed that most of the interventions have an overlapping area with a multi-layered system supporting the mental health of the children with a continuum for care. The aim is to provide wellbeing of the children preventing the development of the mental health problems. Interventions for addressing mental health challenges are provided through the life course. However, as observed by Fazel, Garcia and Stein (2016), the mental illness in most cases have a childhood antecedent that protects the wellbeing and health of the young population in UK. It also helps in building resilience against the adversity related to mental illness.
As stated by Punukollu, Burns and Marques (2020), when the mental illness is diagnosed and intervened early, the individual can have a normal life faster. In order to achieve that there are strategies that are promoted so that the parent mental health is emphasised so that the child can overcome mental illness effectively. The effective health interventions aim at targeting faster diagnosis of the mental illness so that the individual can be benefited at the early stages of their life (Howarth et al. 2019). Especially, these interventions are benefitted by those communities who are socially excluded. These children are from the low socioeconomic status, suffer from the bully and abuse due to the social stigma, exclusion and discrimination.
In UK, the roles played by the schools have been changing consistently. Once it had been the vehicle for attainment of knowledge and academic learning while now it has been identified as one of the safe environments for mental illness intervention for the children (Costa et al. 2019), it plays a secure base for delivering physical and mental health care to the young population. It can help the students in tackling challenges like obesity, depression, lack of social skills that have also found to impact on their overall physical health. The schools in UK understands and follows the principles of social development of the children within the school environment (Howarth et al. 2019). The main idea behind the promotion of mental health focuses on the constructs of emotional and social skills in addition to the development of positive behaviour, effective ability to solve problems, social inclusion, including good citizenry.
Several studies have been carried out to understand whether the schools in UK are able to provide good evidence-based support in the promotion of the mental health of the students. These school-based intervention programmes are imparted by the school staffs to both the secondary and primary class students. Schools are known to be an ideal setting in capturing the population of children in a three-tiered approach of developing the mental health condition. Further, this model of approach, according to Sanchez et al. (2018), has been observed to prevent the development of psychiatric problems in children. This intervention process has three components that include selective, indicative and universal intervention. Universal interventions involve in addressing the mental health condition of the whole class; selective intervention is specifically targeted for a group of students who had the risk of mental health challenge leading clinical symptoms. The indicated interventions address the treatment of mental health condition including emotional disturbances, depression, anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress.
In the case of the universal approach, the intervention method is less intrusive and are found to potentially imply lower prices so that they can be easily adopted in school settings. Most of the schools in UK prefer this type of approach as it can be incorporated within the school structure. This also allows the school to include all the students so that they can be benefitted by them. The universal approach, as observed to by Howarth et al. (2019), includes monitoring of risky behaviour, anxiety disorder, mood disorder and behaviour management. The universal intervention has been implemented in a different range of ages, including therapeutic modalities and therapist involving in cognitive behavioural as well as stress reduction technique.
While in case of selective approach, the schools have taken up prevention efforts is that they are able to address the risk factors and implement interventions related to substance abuse amongst the adolescents, cognitive distortions associated to the personality of the children and behavioural problems among the children. In addition, the intervention under this approach is delivered within classrooms for a smaller group of children. One such programme, as observed by Knight, Mercer and Skinner (2020), was called as Coping Power Programme involving coping with aggressive behaviour, delinquency and drug misuse.
This kind of programme helps in developing alternative strategies for coping with behavioural problems. The indicated approach addresses problems like anxiety, depression and self-deliberated harm, including post-traumatic stress (Vesely et al. 2018). The indicated approach is found to have a stronger outcome in terms of depression and also suicide prevention. There are several schools that have adopted evidence-based trial for the indicated approach are found to treat the post-traumatic condition in the student through Cognitive behavioural interventions.
Identification of the Key Elements of the Intervention and its Evaluation
There are several system reviews that are available within the early education and pre-school programmes where the effectiveness of the social skills and cognitive skills are enhanced, including the...