Community mental health treatment and subsequent outcomes in children and young people: what works, for whom, and why? (llc_0033)

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many youth have sought help for their mental health. Those who do get treatment want mental health services to help as much as possible. While treatment guidelines are based on scientific evidence, this does not mean that services work in the “real world” as they do when tested in a study. We still don’t know whether and how services received help youth with different types of problems, and whether some youth find treatment works better for them than others.
We aim to understand these questions by looking at data from community studies, where we have information on how youth are feeling and what mental health services they’ve accessed. Of the youth who have a mental health problem, some get treated and some don’t. We will use information from those who don’t get treatment to compare against those who do get treatment. This helps understand how much mental health services help those who need them. We will take account of the reasons why youth may or may not access these services, so the groups are comparable. We will look at the ways that mental health services remained helpful for youth during the COVID-19 pandemic.