Using the occupation of the creative arts to promote mental health in young people: Positive Mindset Creative Arts Festival

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a serious public health concern. They effect mental health across the lifespan, lead to social, emotional and cognitive impairment and reduce life expectancy by up to 20 years. Young people experiencing ACEs are highly vulnerable, and therapeutic service provision has limited capacity and in some places poor access (e.g. isolated rural localities). Research, policy and practice is becoming more cognisant of the needs of people living with the consequences of ACEs. However, individual and social factors (i.e. age, ethnic and gender identity, neurodiversity) are neglected. Arts interventions are recognised as offering significant benefits, especially for culturally diverse groups and young people, and for those with limited literacy or inability to verbally express and articulate their emotional worries. Digital and creative arts interventions offer a range of creative opportunities, involving emotional activation and processing, and all self-determined in terms of the degree of participation in preferred creative activities. So the interventions may be personalised and ensure ACE exposed young people are not re-traumatised and have a positive experience of therapeutic efforts. This paper provides a rapid scoping review of the empirical evidence on creative arts and digital interventions for prevention of ACEs and recovery from the mental health consequences of ACEs.

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Public health programmes to promote mental health in young people: a systematic integrative review protocol

BMJ Open ◽

10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037241 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (9) ◽

pp. e037241

Author(s):

Nuwan Darshana Wickramasinghe ◽

Nelum Samarutilake ◽

Mihiri Chami Wettasinghe ◽

Julie Feiler ◽

Antony Morgan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Mental Health ◽

Young People ◽

Well Being ◽

Narrative Synthesis ◽

Facilitators And Barriers ◽

Health And Well Being ◽

Public Health Programmes ◽

Health Programmes ◽

Promote Mental Health

IntroductionIn light of the ever-growing mental health disease burden among young people worldwide, we aim to systematically review the global literature to identify the public health programmes targeted at promoting mental health and well-being in young people, the reported/anticipated mental health-related outcomes of the implemented public health programmes and the reported facilitators and barriers in relation to the implementation of those public health programmes.Methods and analysisA comprehensive literature search will be carried out in the following electronic bibliographic databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Scopus, ASSIA, Web of Science, Global Health, AMED, Health Source and The Cochrane Library. Further, a manual search of the reference lists of eligible studies and reviews will be carried out. The search strategy will include combinations of three key blocks of terms, namely: ‘young people’, ‘mental health’ and ‘public health programme’, using database-specific subject headings and text words. Two reviewers will independently screen, assess data quality and extract data for synthesis. Disagreements at any stage will be resolved by consensus with the involvement of a third reviewer. Given the anticipated methodological pluralism of the potential eligible studies, we will provide a narrative synthesis of the findings on public health programmes aimed at promoting the mental health and well-being of young people according to identified thematic areas. Furthermore, a narrative synthesis of the reported facilitators and barriers in relation to the implementation of public health programmes will be provided.Ethics and disseminationGiven that the review findings will be focused on understanding the breadth and depth of the global research into public health programmes to promote mental health in young people with a particular emphasis on the facilitators and barriers of programmatic implementation, the findings will be of great value to inform future interventions, programmes and approaches to promote mental health and well-being of young people worldwide.PROSPERO registration numberCRD42018099551.

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