People with mental health problems experience significant inequalities including high levels of early mortality, morbidity, unemployment, poverty, isolation and social exclusion. This also presents major health, social and economic challenges to wider society. Our International Network unites leaders from academia, policy, practice, business and community organisations from the EU and US. Each partner has an impressive track record of leading evidence-based policy and programme development at a national level and each has pioneered participation in research of people with lived experience of mental health problems. This transatlantic network will share and build upon state of the art knowledge in four key areas of social inclusion: citizenship, recovery, stigma and public policy. Our collaboration will enable new knowledge, synergies and solutions to emerge by connecting our diverse national and disciplinary perspectives with the lived experiences of people with mental health problems. Through the network we will enhance the skills and career opportunities for researchers and practitioners, and contribute towards the sustained inclusion of people with lived experience. This grant will enable us to share our learning in profound ways to understand ‘what works’ in very different social contexts, including through interaction between the four themed work packages. There is a strong commitment amongst partners to maintain the network long term. As partners we have considerable experience in supporting participatory mental health research with migrant citizens, people who are homeless and diverse ethnic minorities. Social exclusion is often intensified for women who encounter gender-based discrimination and cumulative adversity. Therefore, throughout this proposal, we will pay particular attention to issues of intersectionality in relation to gender, and consider how promoting social inclusion, citizenship and rights must take account of social identities.

Growing evidence of the prevalence of poor mental health among children and young people in the UK has led to this issue becoming a key policy priority. Recent Government reports and policy programmes have particularly emphasised the role of schools and colleges, as universal services, in supporting children and young people's mental health and improving early identification of and intervention for pupils with particular mental health needs. While such reports have presented an economic case for investment in early prevention of mental ill health, emphasising the costs of long term treatment for persistent poor mental health in adult life, this economic argument neglects the impact that early life mental health potentially has on other early life outcomes fundamental in determining life chances, such as educational attainment. There are a number of mechanisms through which poor mental health could lead to poorer educational outcomes, including through school absence and dropout, through behavioural and attentional difficulties and through lowered aspirations and school connectedness. Alternatively, the association between mental health and educational outcomes might not be direct and causal, but incorporate the influence of other social, biological and/or demographic confounding factors. Existing evidence suggests that poor mental health in childhood and early adolescence is associated with poorer educational and employment outcomes in later life. However, a robust, longitudinal, up-to-date and nationally representative study is needed to unequivocally establish whether a causal relationships exists. Robust evidence of a causal relationship between poor mental health and lower academic attainment could be hugely influential in further encouraging education policymakers and schools to invest in mental health. This research will investigate the influence of mental health and well-being throughout early adolescence on educational attainment at Key Stage 4, using longitudinal data from the Youth Panel of Understanding Society, the UK Household Panel Study (UKHLS), which has been linked to the National Pupil Database. It will consider how far parental characteristics, the home learning environment, individual demographics, in-school behaviours and prior attainment mediate the association between attainment and mental health and well-being. The questions to be answered are as follows: i. To what extent are family socioeconomic and demographic circumstances associated with educational attainment throughout adolescence? ii. To what extent is the home learning environment associated with educational attainment throughout adolescence? iii. How far does psychological mental health and well-being explain educational attainment? iv. What factors mediate the association between mental health and educational attainment? v. Are these associations consistent across different socioeconomic and demographic groups, geographical areas, or school types?

Young people are increasingly engaged with digital technology with the majority connecting to different social media on a daily basis. The speed with which new technologies are emerging is exponential. We also know that the rates of MH concerns in YP are increasing; with 75% of MH problems presenting and being established before the age of 24 (50% before the age of 14). It is estimated that 20% of adolescents are experiencing a MH concern on an annual basis. The growing importance of engaging with and developing new technologies has been recognised within several government policy documents and E-Health strategies for health and social care have been developed in all four regions of the UK. There is a recognised need to develop online support mechanisms that offer tailored advice or emergency support during both in and out-of-hours periods. The recent COVID19 pandemic has also resulted in a rapid move within clinical services to utilise technology for service delivery; replacing the traditional face-to-face provision. It is believed that virtual modalities will be required extensively now and in the future. This project seeks to establish an interdisciplinary network, which will focus on the use of technology in supporting YP who are experiencing psychological distress; in particular as it relates to help seeking, stigma (a prejudice and discrimination towards someone directly because of a MH issue that they have) reduction and interventions/treatments. The project therefore aims to address two key challenges: 1. Identify existing and emerging digital technologies that promote MH help-seeking and stigma reduction in YP at risk of MH problems and 2.Understand how existing and newly developed technologies can influence (positively and negatively) adolescent MH concerns and what aspects of these technologies can support those with mental ill health in addition to what aspects can promote resilience. To do this, we will work closely with a young person's advisory group; placing their voice central to all activities, including the preparation of this proposal. Indeed, eight YP were consulted in early May and were fundamental to helping shape the Mood Movement network, activities, stakeholders, and planned outputs. This project therefore seeks to update existing knowledge about how and in what ways YP use technology, both existing and emerging, to support a variety of aspects related to their MH. We will do this through five inter-related work-packages; 1) First, we will develop a project brand, website and social media presence to ensure visibility across the sector and within the public, helping us to also get information out to others as quickly as possible; 2) Second, we will engage with YP and their parents/caregivers to ensure that the network structure, stakeholders and activities are all mapping to the topics and issues that are important to them. We want to ensure that our focus and questions are clear, relatable, and meaningful; 3) The third and largest work package will involve hosting four events engaging with a wide range of professionals and early career researchers on key topics within the field, 4) Following the four events, the fourth work package involves the core research team and the young person's advisory group meeting with the MH Foundation to consolidate the knowledge into a first draft consensus statement and research priorities; and 5) The fifth and final work package will undertake a survey of national and international experts concerning the content of the consensus statement to seek their views and agreement. The finalised consensus statement will be shared widely in the UK, Ireland, and internationally ensuring it is useful to those who both experience psychological distress and those who support YP experiencing psychological distress. This will be nationally and internationally relevant given the common nature of online technologies, and access to international content across countries.

The World Health Organisation (2012) argue that dementia is the greatest health challenge of our time. The day-to-day lives of those living with dementia is incredibly complex and current health and social care provision may not be best able to meet their needs (Alzheimer's Society 2012). Contemporary policies aim to empower people with choices and resources, quite different to earlier ideas in which risk was understood as something to be controlled and limited. This move from managing 'vulnerable people' (through an emphasis on safety and loss) to managing vulnerable situations is evident in the contemporary language used such as 'risk enablement', 'positive risk taking', 'reasonable risk', and positive risk in practice models such as personalisation. Our recent completion of Healthbridge, the evaluation of innovative and empowering services recommended by the National Dementia Strategy for England (DH 2009) has generated a large volume of data from people living with dementia (Clarke et al 2013). In total, 239 interviews were completed (lasting 45-120 minutes) with 47 people with a diagnosis of dementia and 54 carers interviewed on up to three occasions. This is the largest data-set of interviews with people with dementia and carers that can be found. We aim to interrogate this existing qualitative dataset in partnership with those living with dementia, using an approach that sets out to challenge assumptions of current practice to inform the development of empowering support for people living with dementia. To achieve this aim, our objectives are to: 1. Interrogate through secondary data analysis a large qualitative data-set of interviews with people living with dementia using two theoretical frameworks that will inform our analytical process: risk and resilience, and the ethic of care. 2. Collaborate with people living with dementia in the co-production (interpretation) of knowledge and the co-production of digital stories which re-present experiences within the data set. 3. Working with partners to influence practice and services to ensure that the work impacts on the development of services and support through briefing papers, digital stories, a blog and a good practice guide. The project will be a process of co-production between academic researchers and non-academic partners, acknowledging the varied yet equally valuable knowledge/ experience bases involved in the process. There will be two key aspects to the work - identification of theory from the existing dataset, and participation with people with experience of dementia. These link together, enabling people living with dementia to be part of the process of analyzing the data. Partners in the work are the Mental Health Foundation and Alzheimer Scotland. We will work together to develop a relationship with four groups of people with dementia and their carers, who will then shape the emerging findings from the secondary analysis of the data-set. Together with people living with dementia, we will create digital stories which combine individual experiences and the analysed data. These will be central to two workshops with people who influence policy and practice in dementia care. In order to have the greatest influence of the work, we will communicate throughout and after the duration of the project with a wide academic and non-academic audience through a website, blog commentary, briefing papers and a good practice guide. The collaboration between the Mental Health Foundation, Alzheimer Scotland and the University of Edinburgh creates a powerful combination of influence and access to the key policy and practice arenas to ensure longer term use of the findings across these sectors.

The present project is for a team to spend four months to develop ideas and practical arrangements for a large study of 'social exclusion' and the role of stories in people's lives. The paragraph below describes the project we will be developing. Social exclusion occurs when people fail to take up educational opportunities and employment, and find themselves instead living lives in which anti-social behaviour, crime, and poor health can come to play too large a role. This is a challenge for the communities where social exclusion has come to dominate the social and cultural fabric of life, but it is also a great challenge for society as a whole. "Whose Story?" is a project that aims to make a difference to society's understanding of social exclusion, by placing storytelling and narrative at the centre of its research methods. Our title captures the idea, first, that people living in the grip of social exclusion can feel voiceless and bereft of an identity; and, second, the idea that social exclusion and inclusion can define the same peoples and communities at different times. Our project is alert to communities as places and ways of belonging that have complicated histories. Our emphasis on stories and narratives also works with an important truth: that to tell a story is to share something, and reflect one's self in a network of social and cultural relationships. Storytelling is a form of action that can begin to challenge social exclusion. The data collected from storytelling can tell us a great deal about the terms in which exclusion is felt and understood; it also provides the means of changing behaviours and horizons of expectation. Our project has assembled a team of researchers from diverse geographical locations in the UK, enabling us to construct a representative range of perspectives on exclusion and inclusion in community life; while also, and crucially, providing us with the basis for using action research to connect communities in innovative and beneficial ways. Our team of researchers also comes from diverse academic-disciplinary and practice-led backgrounds: from expertise in medical humanities, the history of psychiatry, community arts organisation, management studies and cultural entrepreneurship; to the more traditional academic disciplines of philosophy, literary criticism and theory, and cultural history. This rich mix of expertise will enable us to develop an innovative range of methods for intervening to improve community connectedness. Our methods will range from quasi-experimental design (a technique widely used in psychological and social scientific experimentation), to critical theories of narrative analysis pioneered by philosophers, theorists and cultural historians such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Paul Ricoeur and Patrick Joyce. They will be brought together to produce critically innovative interdisciplinary methods of working. Our commitment to using narrative to make a difference and achieve positive social impact is grounded in our commitment to storytelling in cognitive behavioural therapies, where the emphasis is on understanding behaviour with a view to changing it, positively. Our ways of working will be grounded in action research, and we will begin by fully involving our third sector partners and community representatives in the discussion and design of our methods, interventions, and strategies for data collection and analysis.