Project Overview
MytHICAL is a programme of in-depth explorative mental health informatics research projects.
We dovetail with the Adolescent Data Platform (ADP) project, funded by mental health research charity MQ, and we benefit from access to newly linked diverse datasets within the platform.
We aim to find answers to complex questions about what influences the mental health of children and young people – knowledge which will make a difference to how people are helped in the future. With funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC) we have been able to step up our research into a number of critical areas.
We use the ADP to conduct our studies to address the key challenges of mental health informatics. We will investigate the settings within which children and young people find themselves that may influence their mental health, using electronic data to better understand the causes.
We are investigating the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on how children and young people’s mental health develops. ACEs are potentially stressful or traumatic experiences like abuse, neglect or growing up with one or more parent with their own mental health issues.
Our education studies are looking into whether there are opportunities to identify children at highest risk of developing mental health issues through their attainment levels at key educational milestones.
We hope that a better knowledge of the information held within existing datasets, and being linked for the first time, could inform future support for the children and young people we know are most at risk.
