A conference focused on early intervention into youth mental health

Talk2Nish is a charity partner for Brainwaves Living Well conference in July. We spoke to the organisation’s Director of Education, Julian Turner, about how the organisation came into being, what its aims are and what it hopes for from the conference.

BrainWaves is a global mental health and wellbeing initiative for young people led by the University of Oxford, in partnership with The Day, a publication which turns the news into lessons for young people, as well as support from Dora Lowenstein, President of Brainwaves and a philanthropist in the mental health space.

It offers free lesson materials for teachers and  free CPD webinars to help teachers understand the science of the teenage brain and learn about practical strategies that can support students with their mental health. It also trials school-based mental health interventions via a number of pilot secondary schools.

 

According to Turner, it came about because researchers at Oxford University’s Department of Psychiatry were aware of the problems with data and research on mental health showing that many young people were struggling with their mental wellbeing, but when they got to the point where professional intervention was needed there were too many for the system to be able to manage. “They realised that if we just focus on the crisis end of mental health and it keeps growing it becomes a never-ending problem,”  he says. However, they reasoned that if more young people could be caught before they get to a crisis stage and the number of young people who need clinical services could be reduced the system would be able to cope better. “They thought the only way to do that was to help young people manage their wellbeing better,” says Turner. 

To do that requires action on several fronts. For instance, there is also a need to address the gap between research and its ability to affect change in the real world. Turner talks about how long it can take to get research findings out into the world following analysis, peer review and publication and then to get people to listen to the implications for what should change. Brainwaves wants to make data better and more practically useful.  

Another issue is that young people are so overwhelmed by often emotive information on social media and teachers are not equipped to deal with that and, in any event, are not counsellors. 

Putting young people at the centre

Brainwaves starts with the lived experience of young people and is committed to listening to young people and empowering them. It has a young people’s advisory group which inputs on every aspect of its work. 

Brainwaves also supports cohort studies on young people’s behaviour and attitudes. It analyses the data, anonymises it and makes it freely available to any bona fide researcher in the world through an online portal. It has analysed which questions get the most answers in order to focus in on these and not waste time on questions which young people may find less relevant.

Brainwaves uses that data to create a suite of free lessons for Key Stage 4 students that teachers can use with young people on issues such as the relationship between sleep and wellbeing. They invite teachers to promote discussions about these with young people. “We are flipping it so we are not just telling them to turn their computer off. We want to encourage conversations about them taking control of how they are feeling and how they are managing their lives,” says Turner. “It is powerful for them to know that they can have an impact on their own mental health and that there are things you can do to make a difference. That is our goal - to give young people agency.” 

The July conference is the first big conference for Brainwaves. They are bringing together a network of around 70 research schools and research partners who take part in Brainwaves activities. Brainwaves used to bring partners together at Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry, but the network outgrew this so they decided to open it up, including to studies from other researchers. “It’s all part of our goal to speed up the process between research and its impact in schools,” says Turner. Most of the speakers are academics and they will cover topics including attendance, self harm, neurodiversity and sport.

Turner adds: “Brainwaves is about creating a conversation between young people, researchers and teachers in as equal a way as possible so young people’s voices are genuinely heard and understood and teachers are heard and supported in a way that does not make them feel they are doing something wrong.”

*Find out more about the Brainwaves conference.