Allemang Brooke, Cullen Olivia, Schraeder Kyleigh, Pintson Karina, Dimitropoulos Gina
Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Department of Pediatrics, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
J Can Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2021 May;30(2):123-130. Epub 2021 May 1.
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in reduced access to in-person mental health services, and a shift to virtual platforms. Youth may be uniquely impacted by physical distancing requirements during the pandemic, including limited socialization opportunities, closures of educational institutions, a lack of meaningful extracurricular activities and adverse implications on key developmental milestones. Due to the potential impact of COVID-19 on youth well-being, the need to rapidly transform services to be accessible, and the potential risks associated with this rapid transformation, it is imperative that youth continue to be engaged in research and service development. Young people's perspectives, strengths and skills need to be considered to effectively adapt the delivery of mental health services. Continuing to center youth engagement in mental health research throughout the pandemic can ensure research questions, programs, and services align with the needs and preferences of youth. In this commentary, we pose three recommendations for conducting youth-engaged mental health research during the pandemic, including adapting youth engagement strategies when rapid decisions must be made, the use of tools for virtual engagement, and suggestions for evaluating youth engagement practices. These strategies and principles may be applicable to other scenarios where rapid research or system transformation would benefit from youth engagement, such as time-limited child research by trainees (e.g., dissertations) or natural disasters.
新冠疫情导致获得面对面心理健康服务的机会减少，转而采用虚拟平台。疫情期间的社交距离要求可能对青少年产生独特影响，包括社交机会有限、教育机构关闭、缺乏有意义的课外活动以及对关键发展里程碑产生不利影响。由于新冠疫情对青少年福祉的潜在影响、迅速转变服务以使其可及的必要性以及这种快速转变带来的潜在风险，让青少年继续参与研究和服务开发势在必行。需要考虑年轻人的观点、优势和技能，以有效地调整心理健康服务的提供方式。在整个疫情期间持续将青少年参与作为心理健康研究的核心，能够确保研究问题、项目和服务符合青少年的需求和偏好。在这篇评论中，我们针对疫情期间开展青少年参与的心理健康研究提出三项建议，包括在必须迅速做出决策时调整青少年参与策略、使用虚拟参与工具以及评估青少年参与实践的建议。这些策略和原则可能适用于其他情形，即快速研究或系统转变能从青少年参与中受益的情况，比如学员进行有时限的儿童研究（如论文）或自然灾害期间。
