What’s the project?
This project aims to understand what types of mental health support are most effective for which young people with symptoms of anxiety and depression. We also want to find out if there are inequalities in which young people are able to access mental health support when needed.
As part of this research, we will explore some new initiatives which have been recently set up to help more young people with their mental health, such as the Early Support Hubs in local communities, and mental health support offered in schools. Currently, we don’t know much about these services and their effectiveness for supporting different groups of young people with their mental health.
This project will be mixed-methods, meaning it will look at national datasets and do statistical analyses, as well as interviewing young people and staff to find out about their experiences of these services.
We hope the findings from this study will help us learn what types of support work for which young people, making the right service accessible at the right time.
Find out more
We’re aiming to recruit a group of 4 young people from different backgrounds to create our lived experience advisory panel for this project. The project is funded for 5 years. Being part of the lived experience advisory panel would involve meeting online regularly (around every 2 months) to make sure that key decisions are made whilst considering the needs of young people, especially those from minoritised backgrounds. Meetings will take place on either Zoom or Teams, depending on the preferences of individuals in the lived experience group.
Other specific tasks include helping us plan each stage of the project, reviewing documents, designing recruitment information for participants and being involved in analysing and interpreting the research findings. We would also like your help to design the dissemination strategy – this is where we share our findings with other researchers, policy makers, mental health services and the general public. All these tasks can also be done online. If you don’t have any experience of doing these tasks, but meet the eligibility criteria below – we would still love to hear from you! Full instructions (and training, where necessary) will be offered to complete the tasks, and you will be supported by researchers throughout.
In general, we anticipate tasks and meetings to take around an average of half a day a month, although there will be times when more or less work will be needed, depending on the stage of the project.
– Must be based in England
– Aged between 16 and 24
– Have access to a laptop or computer to review documents and join meetings online
– Have experienced symptoms of anxiety and depression
– Have tried to seek mental health support for these symptoms (although you don’t have to have received any support)
– This is a 5 year project, and although we appreciate that things and commitments may change, we would like people to apply if they can foresee themselves being able to commit to the majority of this time.
You will be paid £27.50 an hour for your work on this project, with an additional £5 payment to cover costs associated with attending online meetings. You will be offered any relevant training (e.g. on particular research methods) as required, and you will be supported by both the project lead (Becky Appleton) and an experienced lived experience researcher (Lizzie Mitchell).
If you are interested in this opportunity, please email Becky on [email protected] with brief answers to the following questions:
1. What is your name?
2. What is your date of birth?
3. Are you based in England? If so, where?
4. Why are you interested in this project?
5. Can you tell us why you meet the eligibility criteria above? You don’t not have to disclose anything you don’t feel comfortable with (500 words maximum).
6. Sometimes after talking about topics like mental health, people feel they need a little extra support or someone to chat to. What support do you currently have in place (e.g. supportive friends, family, health professionals or mental health charities)? Is there anything that the study team could do to support you or make your involvement experience better?
7. How did you hear about this opportunity?
You are welcome to send your responses in audio or video format if preferred. If you need any help completing your expression of interest, you can get in touch with Becky using this email address: [email protected]
Deadline for applications: 5pm on Monday 23rd February 2026.
Interviews will be held by Becky and Patrick (a lived experience researcher) on Thursday 19th March – if you can’t make this day please let us know and we can work out an alternative date.
Please note that the McPin Foundation regularly promotes opportunities on behalf of other institutions; we are not responsible for the continuation or contents of further correspondence with any project partners where we are not listed as the project main point of contact.
