International Trials Day - Physical Health of Adolescent Inpatients
People with mental health difficulties have poor physical health. Young people on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) inpatient units are particularly vulnerable. They often have increased restrictions on movement, experience mental distress, receive pharmacological treatment, and have less control over their diet. In our latest review of 39 international studies, we found vulnerabilities to poor physical health were common in CYP on CAMHS inpatient units. This included increased weight, high smoking rates, and early signs of metabolic syndrome (See https://doi.org/10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2021.03.007)
We are focussing our research efforts in this area, in a bid to improve the physical health of CYP on CAMHS inpatient units and prevent the onset of co-morbid conditions. We have found that very few published physical health interventions exist on CAMHS inpatient units (See https://doi.org/10.1111/eip.12981). We have subsequently interviewed staff and service users at GMMH on the barriers to living a healthy lifestyle on inpatient units. We hope that this will help us develop an appropriate intervention to trial in the future.
Our current work expands on this by looking at CYP physical health over time. We are conducting one of the first multi-site, longitudinal monitoring studies of physical health in UK CAMHS inpatient units. Find out more here: ARC GM | Trajectory of physical health of adolescent inpatients: a 6 month prospective study (nihr.ac.uk).
This prospective study is being conducted in collaboration with ARC Y&H and is open for recruitment until September 2021. We are assessing the physical health and lifestyle of any new admissions across 5 inpatient units across the UK, over a period of 6 months. There’s still a lot to be done – however, we hope that by making a start and raising awareness of this issue for young people, we can focus on bridging the gap between physical and mental health.
For more information please do get in touch, we would love to hear from you:
Dr Rebekah Carney
Youth Mental Health Research Unit
Twitter - @RebekahCarney10
