Exploring mental health and wellbeing needs of Young Migrant Women

This project aimed to understand the mental health and wellbeing needs of YMW living in Kent, Surrey and Sussex (KSS) and how existing public health school services can meet these needs through co-design of a logic model for existing public health, school and community services.

This project captured the voice and needs of YMW as a foundation to influencing services for improving mental health and wellbeing. The project brought together existing published evidence with the experiences and perspectives of YMW and professionals who support them by:

1. Conducting interviews with YMW 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 received in their early life.
2. Conducting focus groups 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.
3. Summarising published research (e.g., peer-reviewed articles, reports etc.) to understand what things are known to support the mental health and wellbeing of YMW.

With the widening of migrant communities in KSS, this project has the potential to support services to to improve and inform policy and practice within regional public health services to better support this vulnerable and marginalised group.

Results

You can read what our research told us by accessing:

• NIHR final report
• Public summaries: Scoping Review and Interviews
• Experiences of Young Migrant Women in KSS
• Scoping review of existing literature
• Logic model to inform services

Involving the public, stakeholders and young migrant women

This project benefitted from two YMW public advisors working with the research team throughout, sitting on our advisory group and being involved in project activities. They were involved in designing our study and documents, analysing the interviews with young women migrants and disseminating our research.

We also explored migration as part of the Kent Youth Summit 2022. Young people from local schools explored migration and its impact through a creative exercise. See some of the images and word clouds below.

Interested in this research? Contact m.rees-roberts@kent.ac.uk