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  • Which resources help young people to prevent and overcome mental distress in deprived urban areas in Latin America? A protocol for a prospective cohort study

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Mental health
Protocol
Which resources help young people to prevent and overcome mental distress in deprived urban areas in Latin America? A protocol for a prospective cohort study
  1. Stefan Priebe1,
  2. Catherine Fung1,
  3. Luis Ignacio Brusco2,
  4. Fernando Carbonetti2,
  5. Carlos Gómez-Restrepo3,4,
  6. Miguel Uribe4,
  7. Francisco Diez-Canseco5,
  8. Melanie Smuk6,
  9. Nicola Holt7,
  10. James B. Kirkbride8,
  11. Ricardo Araya9,
  12. Craig Morgan9,
  13. Sandra Eldridge10,
  14. Paul Heritage11,
  15. Victoria Bird1
  1. 1Unit of Social and Community Psychiatry (WHO Collaborating Centre for Mental Health Service Development), Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
  2. 2Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, School of Medicine, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
  3. 3Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia
  4. 4Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia
  5. 5CRONICAS Center of Excellence in Chronic Diseases, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru
  6. 6Medical Statistics, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  7. 7Department of Health and Social Sciences, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
  8. 8Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, UK
  9. 9Health Service and Population Research, King's College London, London, UK
  10. 10Pragmatic Clinical Trials Unit, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
  11. 11School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Catherine Fung; c.fung{at}qmul.ac.uk

Abstract

Introduction Improving the mental health of young people is a global public health priority. In Latin America, young people living in deprived urban areas face various risk factors for mental distress. However, most either do not develop mental distress in the form of depression and anxiety, or recover within a year without treatment from mental health services. This research programme seeks to identify the personal and social resources that help young people to prevent and recover from mental distress.

Methods and analysis A cross-sectional study will compare personal and social resources used by 1020 young people (aged 15–16 and 20–24 years) with symptoms of depression and/or anxiety and 1020 without. A longitudinal cohort study will follow-up young people with mental distress after 6 months and 1 year and compare resource use in those who do and do not recover. An experience sampling method study will intensively assess activities, experiences and mental distress in subgroups over short time periods. Finally, we will develop case studies highlighting existing initiatives that effectively support young people to prevent and recover from mental distress. The analysis will assess differences between young people with and without distress at baseline using t-tests and χ2 tests. Within the groups with mental distress, multivariate logistic regression analyses using a random effects model will assess the relationship between predictor variables and recovery.

Ethics and dissemination Ethics approvals are received from Ethics Committee in Biomedical Research, Faculty of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires; Faculty of Medicine-Research and Ethics Committee of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá; Institutional Ethics Committee of Research of the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia and Queen Mary Ethics of Research Committee. Dissemination will include arts-based methods and target different audiences such as national stakeholders, researchers from different disciplines and the general public.

Trial registration number ISRCTN72241383.

  • depression & mood disorders
  • anxiety disorders
  • mental health
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-052339

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter @creativepsyche, @dr_jb_kirkbride

    • Contributors SP and VB led on the conception, design and organisation of the programme. CF and SP wrote the first draft of this manuscript. All authors contributed to the whole study design, commented on earlier drafts, and read and approved the manuscript. MS and SE particularly contributed to the statistical aspects of the programme, JBK to the method for identifying appropriate geographical areas, PH to the planning of all arts activities, NH to the adaptation of the Experience Sampling Method, CM to conceptual and methodological issues of the cohort study, RA to considerations of the Latin American context, and CF to organisational aspects of the programme. LIB, FC, CG-R, MU and FD-C specifically contributed to the adaptation of the design to the national contexts in Argentina, Colombia and Peru.

    • Funding This work is supported by the Medical Research Council (grant number: MR/S03580X/1).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.