Introduction
Young people referred for NHS mental health support face long waiting lists, and up to three quarters will experience deterioration in their mental health while waiting. Social prescribing offers an opportunity to help young people in this situation, by connecting them to non-medical forms of community support such as skills development, peer support, befriending and social or cultural activities.
Our webinar on 11th November presented results from ‘Wellbeing While Waiting’, a study launched in 2022 by our team at UCL’s Social Biobehavioural Research Group, funded by the Prudence Trust. Over the last three years the research project has worked with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) across England to develop and test a social prescribing model that can be scaled nationally to help many more young people.
Speakers
- Professor Daisy Fancourt, Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology, UCL
- Dr Daniel Hayes, Principal Research Fellow, UCL
- Het Stuttard, Research Assistant/Social Prescriber, UCL
Event summary
During the webinar, the research team shared that Wellbeing While Waiting is the first robust trial to demonstrate social prescribing can positively impact mental health difficulties for young people. Additional novel findings are an increase in resilience for young people.
This suggests that social prescribing could be an effective tool in helping support youth mental health in specialist setting whilst they wait for treatment. Our vision is to have a fully developed and tested model for embedding Social Prescribing within CAMHS waiting lists that can be implemented for all children and young people across CAMHS nationally.
You can watch a recording of the event below and view the presentation slides.