The problem

There is a huge gap between need and access to help. Many young people feel unable to ask for help when experiencing depression symptoms.

This is particularly true of those from excluded groups, who are also more likely to experience depression. Both not knowing what help is available and stigma can prevent or delay help-seeking. Even when they do ask for help, young people must wait to access it because services prioritise those who are most severely ill.

Proposed solution

Our programmes of work aim to help make therapy support available on demand and anonymously, thus boosting the provision of early help for depression symptoms. To do this, we need to:

• Discover the best ways to let young people know about early help that is available
• Design and build ways to let them know about early help options, like one-off single-session interventions, and adapt these for the UK context
• Test whether brief online anonymous single session interventions (SSIs) can help to reduce depression symptoms

Access Unlock Wellbeing

Our Unlock Wellbeing platform has been designed to empower young people to overcome low mood and boost wellbeing.

It provides information about and access to free, anonymous, on-demand single-session online interventions for young people. Each of the mini-courses gives you practical, proven advice to help you manage symptoms of low mood and boost your wellbeing by bolstering your coping strategies.

The Unlock Wellbeing website was co-produced in partnership with young people, including the LAMP young people's advisory group (YPAG) and the Young Adult Consultants (YAC), as part of these research projects.

Explore and use Unlock Wellbeing

Project plan

Our research focused on adolescents, age 13-18, will be split into three stages.

Stage one (2023 to 2025)

Drawing on social marketing expertise, we have collected and analysed adverts (‘messages’) used around the world to advertise research studies offering early help for mental health to adolescents.

Alongside this, we explored diverse adolescents’ views about early help for adolescent depression and online SSIs, including ‘think aloud’ techniques where the person is asked to voice their thoughts aloud while looking at example materials shown to them.

You can download our co-produced infographic about where and how adolescents in the UK look for information and help online

We also surveyed professionals who may be the first port of call for adolescents seeking help, including school mental health staff and GPs to get their views too.

Stage two (2024 to 2025)

Together with the Young Person’s Advisory Group (YPAG) and subject and methods expert advisors, we have negotiated permission with the owner (Dr Jessica Schleider, Lab for Scalable Mental Health, Northwestern University) to adapt two online single therapy sessions (SSI) which have been shown to reduce depression symptoms in adolescents in the USA for use in the UK.

We have also developed our website and recruitment strategy, and ethics process for using these widely and safely in the UK.

Stage three (2026)

In a randomised control trial (RCT), we will test these two SSIs with 470 adolescents (aged 13-18). Participants will be randomly allocated to one of the two interventions being tested (one focuses on doing more of what matters, and the other on flexible thinking), or to a supportive control SSI.

We want to find out whether the participants who do the behaviour SSI and the thinking SSI have lower depression symptoms one month, three months and six months later compared to the control.

The difference this will make

We work with our advisory groups to plan the sharing of our research findings. We expect that this will include different, creative ways to share the findings widely with young people (infographics, zines), practitioners (blogs, podcasts), policymakers (webinars, blogs) and other researchers (conferences, journal publications).

The findings will hopefully lead to better ways to let young people know about early help for depression symptoms by improving the credibility, relevance, and accessibility of information about help on offer. The findings will also jumpstart our ability to offer effective online single-session interventions as an openly accessible, scalable, anonymous, and low-cost addition to existing child and adolescent mental health treatments.

Therefore, we aim to improve early access to mental health support for young people with symptoms of depression who are seeking help.

Funding details

Our work is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

Our work, focused on adolescents (age 13-18), is funded through an Advanced Fellowship award to Professor Maria Loades. Our work focused on young adults (age 19-25) is funded through the award to the Bath Mental Health Research Group (MHRG, PI: Dr Pamela Jacobsen).

Project team members and partners

Project team

• Professor Maria Loades, Clinical Psychologist and NIHR Advanced Fellow, LAMP Co-lead
• Dr Jeffrey Lambert, Senior Lecturer, LAMP Co-lead
• Dr Atiyya Nisar, Postdoctoral Researcher
• Sophie Dallison, Research Assistant and PhD student
• Emma Chubb, PhD student
• Natalia Kika, PhD student

Partners

• Dr Debra Desrochers, School of Management (University of Bath)
• Prof Paul Stallard, Department for Health (University of Bath)
• Andre Tomlin and Douglas Badenoch (Minervation)
• Prof Richard Hooper and Pragmatic Clinical Trials Unit
• Assistant Prof Jessica Schleider and Lab for Scalable Mental Health
• Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust Research
• Kooth
• Shout
• Tellmi