Simona Skripkauskaite is the UK lead for one of the ten collaborative research projects jointly awarded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), to address the challenges presented by the global pandemic.
Dr Simona Skripkauskaite, said,
'We're extremely grateful to the ESRC and the JSPS for supporting our research. This funding will allow us to investigate how children, young people, and parents are doing now, two years since the first UK national lockdown, and to assess who may not be "bouncing back" over the longer term.
'Conducting this research in collaboration with our colleagues in the National Center for Child Health and Development in Japan will allow us to assess how experiences have varied across both countries, which have distinct approaches to the pandemic. This research builds on our Co-SPACE study, which we began during the first lockdown. We hope to use what we learn from this new research to help empower young people themselves to be able to translate and share important research findings with wider audiences, by designing guidelines for policy makers and practitioners.'
Project: Learning from the trajectories of mental health challenges for children, young people and parents across Japan and the UK over the course of COVID-19.
COVID-19 and the related public health measures have led to major disruptions to families' lives, with different pressures arising for children, young people, and their families over time. Together with young people and families, the project aims to co-design guidelines for policymakers and health authorities which will:
- Mitigate identified mental health consequences of the pandemic and current policies
- Tailor future pandemic management strategies to minimise mental health impacts
Read more information about this project and the other projects awarded.
Read more about COVID-19: Supporting Parents, Adolescents and Children during Epidemics (Co-SPACE) study, which was set up to help understand how families have coped throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and what parents can do to support their children's mental health.
This story was originally published on the Department of Psychiatry website.