Mental health

It is important that young people are involved in decisions about their mental health care, yet there is little known about the challenges and complexities of shared decision-making in mental health inpatient units.

It is important for young people and the staff working with them to understand the best ways of making decisions together.  

• Shared decision-making requires that the practitioners respect, listen to and take account of the young person’s testimony (their core concerns and inner self).
• The research revealed that these were the very things that were, in many ways, routinely constrained or denied within the environment and systems of inpatient units.
• Young people’s ability to be involved in decision-making was severely undermined by the significant constraints placed upon them by being displaced in new, unfamiliar and restrictive environments. This not only limited their privacy and movement, but also their autonomy, reflexivity, inner being and moral identity as decision-makers.
• The research identified the different ways young people exercise agency, in order to offer new ways of understanding how they responded to constraints and saw their inner self in relation to decision-making.

• Dr Kate Martin

• Professor Priscilla Alderson
• Dr Katy Sutcliffe