Defining young people’s mental health self-care: a systematic review and co-development approach

Abstract

Self-care is among the emerging types of mental health support which operate outside traditional services, although the meaning and practice of self-care for young people with mental health difficulties are currently unclear. This systematic review was pre-registered with PROSPERO (CRD42021282510) and investigated conceptualizations of self-care in academic publications which investigated or discussed self-care for young people’s mental health or wellbeing. A Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) workshop facilitated young people with experience of mental health difficulties to respond to the identified concepts and co-develop a definition of self-care. Searches in PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL Plus, Scopus, Cochrane Library of Systematic Reviews, and gray literature sources resulted in 90 included publications. Content analysis indicated little conceptual consistency, with health and wellness promotion most commonly used to define self-care. The PPI workshop co-developed a definition of mental health self-care, which attendees felt should emphasize an individual process of self-awareness, self-compassion, and specific strategies to work toward emotional balance. This study highlights the gap between current academic understandings of young people’s mental health self-care and young people’s experience. The presented definition will enable future research to begin from an understanding of self-care which is relevant to young people with experience of mental health difficulties.

Peculiarities of the course and management of Ukrainians with post-traumatic stress disorder in the context of the Ukrainian-Russian war

“…The famous American psychiatrist Abram Kardiner in 1941, while studying this problem, called the changes caused by stress during an armed con ict, chronic war neurosis [ 22,23]. That is why the symptoms of the disease have a similar clinical picture in our time and include complaints of patients about: excitability and irritability; xation on the traumatic circumstances of past events; predisposition to aggression and inability to control it; escape from reality; acute reaction to sudden irritants.…”