Public engagement to refine a whole-school intervention to promote adolescent mental health.

Background: Despite high rates of adolescent mental health problems, there are few effective school-based interventions to address this. Whole-school interventions offer a feasible and sustainable means of promoting mental health, but few have to date been evaluated. Previously we trialled the Learning Together intervention comprising local needs assessment, student and staff participation in decision-making, restorative practice, and a social and emotional skills curriculum. This was effective not only in preventing bullying (primary outcome), but also in promoting mental well-being and psychological functioning (secondary outcomes).

Objective: We aimed to adapt Learning Together to develop Learning Together for Mental Health, focused on promoting mental health. This paper reports on how we refined and elaborated intervention materials to produce the Learning Together for Mental Health intervention including through patient and public involvement and engagement.

Design: We reviewed evidence to inform choice of the curriculum component and the contents of our needs assessment survey. We conducted patient and public involvement and engagement with school staff and students, and children and young people from the National Children's Bureau to adapt the intervention. We also conducted a systematic review of reviews to inform a menu of evidence-based actions, but this is reported separately.

Setting: Southern England.

Participants: Patient and public involvement and engagement was conducted with four staff and five students from one secondary school, and a group of two school senior leadership team members from different schools, and about eight children and young people who were members of the Young National Children's Bureau.

Interventions: None.

Results: We refined and elaborated our initial plans for Learning Together for Mental Health to generate an intervention supported by full materials, training and external facilitation. We focused needs assessment on mental health, added a menu of evidence-based whole-school mental health actions, and switched to a different social and emotional skills curriculum. We retained restorative practice and staff/student involvement in decisions. No further refinements were made to the intervention theory of change or overall approach. Patient and public involvement and engagement was useful, but not all suggestions were acted on either because some participants suggested dropping pre-determined elements (e.g. needs survey) or because suggestions (e.g. to include aromatherapy) lacked evidence of effectiveness.

Limitations: Not all of our engagements with patient and public involvement and engagement stakeholders were sustained over time. Our patient and public involvement and engagement work was affected by its having occurred within the recovery period from COVID-19 when schools were more stressed than normal. We had planned for the school involved in patient and public involvement and engagement to be above average in student free-school-meals eligibility, but the school initially recruited dropped out at the last minute. Its replacement had a lower-than-average rate of free-school-meal entitlement.

Conclusions: This paper reports on the process of adaptation and reflects on the various ways in which engagement and evidence review were useful in this process. We found that it is possible to refine interventions and elaborate them to provide full materials and support via processes drawing on evidence review and patient and public involvement and engagement. The latter proved valuable in informing refinement of Learning Together for Mental Health in terms of ensuring its feasibility, acceptability, and inclusiveness. However, in our opinion, not all suggestions from patient and public involvement and engagement can or should be acted on, especially when they do not align with the evidence base.

Future work: A feasibility study to optimise the intervention and assess whether progression to a full trial is justified.

Funding: This article presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Public Health Research programme as award number NIHR131594.