by Chloe Parech
I’m a Healthy Minds apprentice and I am writing about my own experience working with evidence synthesis.
Me and the rest of the Healthy Minds apprentices have been working with Ruth and Rachel with Y-MHESH (“Youth Mental Health Evidence Synthesis Hub”) and looking at different ways we can help them to improve things such as resources that are tailored to young people in order to engage them. These resources include animations for a variety of topics, and with these as a group we were able to watch these videos and look at the things we liked about them. We feel it is important to give the good points about things, rather than providing a lot of negative opinions, as it is more effective to give a variety of positive and negative feedback. We also looked at things we would do in order to fully engage the young people in important videos, this is because as young people ourselves we are able to look at it from a young person’s perspective and what we think would work better.
As well as reviewing animations, we have also had the opportunity to review a range of voice overs that could be used for various animations. With this we were able to think about what would keep young people’s focus while watching these videos, as everything within a video is important and plays an important part in ensuring that young people are fully engaged and that they are able to retain the information they are given.
As Healthy Minds apprentices we also had the opportunity to help film a video for Y-MHESH (shown below), which is the Youth Mental Health Evidence Synthesis Hub and with this we all spoke about what Y-MHESH was, how working with Y-MHESH benefits us as young people. We were also able to talk about why it is important to work with Y-MHESH. Doing this was important, because having young people giving the information and our own views and opinions about important topics will help to engage other young people in the video and it may give them more encouragement to be involved in something as important as this.
I have been able to review the website and look at what works and what doesn’t and I have been able to give my own feedback on the website, this includes how it is laid out, the information used and the quantity of the information, the colours used and adding or taking away images that didn’t work. Doing this was enjoyable because I was able to think as a young person and what would and wouldn’t work for me if I was wanting to access this website and get more information about Y-MHESH. I have also had the opportunity to work with Born in Bradford’s Age of Wonder study as part of my placement at the Bradford Institute for Health Research.
It has been a privilege working on Y-MHESH and being able to give my own views and opinions on things that will have a positive impact on young people’s mental health, as a result of school interventions and resources.
Disclaimer
The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.
This blog was written by Chloe Parech. Chloe Parech is a Healthy Minds Apprentice. The Apprentices are a group of young people working across the Bradford district and Craven to support children and young people, communities and schools with their mental health and wellbeing.
