Exploring Mental Health and Wellbeing Needs of Young Migrant Women

Migration is a precipitating factor for mental health conditions, and Young Migrant Women (YMW) are more predisposed to mental health illnesses due to the specific challenges they face. According to the Office for Statistics’ report, migration in the UK is now at the highest level and in some areas school students for whom English is not their first language has increased by 49.2% since 2012.

Therefore, with the widening of migrant communities, there is a need to understand how to reduce health inequalities in this population through improved, evidenced-based practice.

This project aims to understand the mental health and wellbeing needs of YMW aged 16 – 24-years living in Kent, Surrey and Sussex (KSS) as areas with medium to high migrant populations. This understanding will be used to discuss and co-design adaptations to existing non-NHS public health services with providers and YMW with respect to school, health, social care and community programmes to ensure the needs of YMW are met.

A logic model will be co-designed with stakeholders detailing what effective support for good mental health, wellbeing and preventing mental ill-health is for this population. The project will be conducted with YMW, service providers and policy makers. The project will bring together the voices of YMW, service providers and existing published evidence by:

• Conducting interviews with YMW (n=15-25) aged 16 to 24, who have been living in Kent, Surrey and Sussex for at least 5-years to understand their lived experiences of mental health, wellbeing and support services received in their early life. Interviews will be 45-60 minutes in length and participants will be invited through organisations such as charities, schools (over 16-years), colleges and universities health programmes and groups, community and charity services for migrants and through social media.

Interviews will be conducted in a neutral environment decided by the participant who can bring others for support if preferred.

• Two 2-hour focus groups (n=6-8 people per group) with professionals responsible for policy, commissioning or provision of support services such as school health and charity services for mental health and wellbeing of migrant populations to understand how YMW are supported and how well existing services do this. Participants will be sought through the project team’s contacts and links with existing services, school programmes and charities for migrant populations such as Migrant Help.

• A scoping review of the current published research (including grey literature and reports) will be conducted to understand the current evidence for determinants of good/poor mental health and wellbeing in YMW and evidenced preventative interventions supporting good mental health and wellbeing.

The emerging grounded theory from the above will be shared at a stakeholder/dissemination event for service providers and YMW. Findings will be discussed and used to appraise existing services and a logic model co-designed for optimum public health and non-NHS services for YMW. The logic model will then form the basis of a follow on study for which funding will be sought to evaluate the outcomes and impact of support for YMW.

The findings will be reported to NIHR, through a lay and executive summary online and presented at national conferences e.g. European Forum for Primary Care conference and Migrant Help Building Bridges – Mental Health & Wellbeing in the Asylum Sector Conference.