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By Elizabeth Colbert
PhD student
Early identification of mental health difficulties and neurodevelopmental differences in children and young people (CAYP) is crucial to prevent negative long term impacts, such as co-occurring conditions and impacts to social and academic wellbeing. Due to the amount of time spent in educational settings, teachers are uniquely situated to recognise early presentations and symptoms of such conditions, offer appropriate adjustments and support for CAYP, and begin relevant referrals. Understandings surrounding obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) are often limited and entwined with stigmatised representations of the condition. The rationale for this project came from the current lack of accessible and representative information surrounding OCD and how teachers are able to support CAYP experiencing symptoms, as well as Elizabeth Colbert’s lived experience of the condition in childhood.
Therefore, this PhD project aims to produce a co-designed psychoeducational resource to improve teacher awareness and understandings of paediatric OCD, in the hopes of improving subsequent identification and access to support for CAYP with the condition. The production of the resource will be carried out alongside CAYP with OCD, their families, clinicians and educational professionals. This is to ensure an accurate and comprehensive account of the condition is provided within the resource. Such groups will be consulted with to identify teachers’ existing knowledge of OCD, how we can build on this, the format in which they like to receive this information, and to assess the suitability of the prototype resource in providing this information. Perspectives will be explored through a series of interviews, focus groups and co-production workshops utilising principles of co-design. This project is supervised by Dr Lauren Powell and Dr Anna Weighall, and has obtained White Rose DTP ESRC funding.
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