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Mapping the Mental Health of the UK’s Young People tool

Last week we had the great honour of representing Kooth at an exhibition at the Scottish Parliament.

Kooth visit Holyrood - January 2025

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How Kooth is democratising mental health support in Scotland

Kooth has been shortlisted for its work with Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership and Transport for Greater Manchester in the ‘Most Impactful Partnership in Preventative Healthcare’ category for the 2025 HSJ Partnership Awards.  


Kooth, Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership and Transport for Manchester shortlisted for HSJ Award

Working with Lincs NHS to support young people on waiting lists

With long waiting lists affecting mental health support, meeting the needs of young patients can be challenging, especially when we know that issues can escalate over time. YoungMinds research shows 58% of young people felt their mental health got worse while waiting for support.
According to The Independent, over 1.5 million adults and over 540,000 children were in contact with mental health services as of March 2024, highlighting the overwhelming demand across all age groups and the strain on timely access to care.

Kooth and Qwell offer a solution: free, confidential online mental health support with no waiting lists or referrals. We are NHS commissioned and BACP accredited, providing safe and professional in-the-moment support.


Guidance for GPs and healthcare practitioners on signposting to Kooth 

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Kooth and The Wave Project – Supporting young people beyond the beach

Extending support to parents and carers in Clackmannanshire

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Depression and Anxiety

Mini ctivities

Grounded activities

Energetic activities

A mixed set of group activities for young people and teachers

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Winter Activities (Mixed)

Exam Stress Collection

Supporting students through exams

Mental health and wellbeing

Resources for University Students

Welsh language Kooth posters

Friendships and relationships

Eating disorders posters

Anti-Bullying Week Posters

Anti-Bullying Week Collection

Race, racism and discrimination

Creating therapeutic content to support maternal mental health

Suicide prevention: the critical role of early support

Sam Stables is a farmer in Herefordshire who started the agricultural charity, 'We are Farming Minds', to help raise mental health awareness in rural communities. In this interview, Sam talks about his personal struggles and how he’s learned to ask for help and lighten the load for himself, and for others.

Two teenage boys

Suicide awareness: How I learned to step back when things felt impossible

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Universal support from ages 10 and up in Greater Manchester

Classroom poster about half term activities

Example class poster

Why Kooth is particularly helpful for people living with neurodivergence

World Mental Health Day - progress on our pledge

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Kooth and Mind partnership brings easy-to-access mental health support to Cambridgeshire and Peterborough

Emotionally Based School Avoidance, or EBSA for short, refers to young people who struggle to attend school because of a range of emotional factors. It’s really important to highlight that EBSA is not about young people being “defiant” or “lazy” - it’s a complex issue with no one single cause.

What is EBSA and how does it impact children and young people?

The Kooth Future Council. is a competition aimed at finding young people to join our first-ever youth-powered content team. This unique opportunity equips 15-18-year-olds with valuable skills in video editing, content creation, and leadership.


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Kooth calls on young people to get creative for a spot on the Kooth Future Council

Lord Darzi report: Prevention is key

Aligned with THRIVE, Kooth’s approach has always been to support people in exploring their wants and needs, giving them autonomy and choice over their mental health journey. 

Kooth: closely aligned with the THRIVE

Responding to NHS Providers report: Early intervention and prevention is the best approach to address mental health crisis

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Integrated Digital Pathway Pilots: outcomes and evaluation

How we keep our service user community safe

Kooth spoke to a parent, Nita, who opened up about her story supporting a child with neurodiversity through adolescence. 

Supporting your child who's coming out

Teen takeover: creating our Mental Health Awareness Week campaign

Examining concurrent validity and item selection of the Wants and Needs Outcome Measure (SWAN-OM) in a web-based therapy service

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The Development of Adult SWAN-OM using novel data-science approaches

Kooth spoke to a parent, Mel, who opened up about her story supporting a child with neurodiversity. 

Supporting a neurodiverse child: Mel's story

Supporting a neurodiverse child: Nita's story

Kooth spoke to a parent, Jude, who opened up about her story supporting a child with neurodiversity and mental health difficulties. 

Supporting a neurodiverse child with mental health difficulties: Jude's story

Kooth's high standards of user safety, governance and assurance

How Kooth’s support model aligns with the findings of the Cass report

Qwell now available to parents and carers in Clackmannanshire

Digital mental health service, Qwell, now available to parents and carers in Clackmannanshire

Why we pre-moderate every piece of content on Kooth 

Collaborating with specialist support organisations

The urgent need for preventative mental health support for young people

Working with students for Children's Mental Health Week

From anonymity to autonomy: How young people feel about Kooth

New online mental health service launches for all adults in Kent and Medway

Pilot evaluation to assess the effectiveness of youth peer community support via the Kooth online mental wellbeing website

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An Evaluation of clinical effectiveness - Kooth’s community and chat based support

World Mental Health Day: Kooth’s Pledge to Underserved Communities

How Kooth is responding to feedback and remaining at the forefront of innovation in digital mental health

Giving Young People a Voice to Inform Digital Services

Mental health support is available to help relieve the stress of exam results day

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Mental health and emotional wellbeing support for young people during summer via  Kooth.com

The “one at a time” approach assumes the young person may not return for further sessions and focuses on providing an effective, solution-focused therapeutic contact to address the young person’s wants and needs. 

One and done - scaling mental health support with single sessions

Working alongside Muslim communities

A case study focusing on the impact of Pennsylvania’s whole-school approach

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The theory of system change

This report utilised data from the first five months of this pioneering pilot demonstrates the value, as well as the need, in having Kooth available as a digital mental health and wellbeing service across whole-school districts in Pennsylvania. Key education-based stakeholders in school districts involved in this pilot program have reiterated the increasing mental health needs of their students, which outstrip the current resource in many of their schools, and alongside leading academics, have shown support for Kooth as a digital platform to provide mental health and wellbeing support to their students. This report provides early evidence around how Kooth can (1) improve access to mental health and wellbeing services, (2) reduce the need for downstream intervention with early help, (3) enable the use of other services, and (4) impact the school system, at a student and organisational level.

Filling the gap in Pennsylvania: Impacts on an individual and systemic level

Using Kooth’s data, this paper explores the impact of the pandemic on service access and presenting concerns and whether differences were observed by sociodemographic characteristics in terms of access (gender, ethnicity and deprivation). 

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Changes to digital mental health use during COVID-19

Engagement of individuals aged 14–25 years with a digital mental health service during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK: a cohort study of service usage data. A collaborative research paper between Kooth and University of Swansea


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Community is key - facilitating changing priorities of young people during COVID-19

Identifying key challenges and needs in digital mental health moderation practices supporting users exhibiting risk behaviours to develop responsible AI tools: a case study of Kooth

The design and development of an experience measure for a peer community moderated forum in a digital mental health service

A way to measure outcomes from community engagement - introducing the POCEM

Kooth & Universities: Exeter, Manchester, 2022.
The helpfulness of web-based mental health and wellbeing forums for providing peer support for young people: A cross-sectional exploration.

The Helpfulness of Web-Based Mental Health and Well-being Forums for Providing Peer Support for Young People: Cross-sectional Exploration

The base case results followed a real cohort of 2,160 young people. The results of the cost calculator estimated that engagement with the Kooth platform is associated with a cost saving of £303,234 or £199 per engaged user, to the NHS and UK crime sector. These results are based on a typical Kooth contract in the UK.


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York Health Economic Consortium Report: Cost-savings to UK public sectors

Exploring the experience of online, text-based support during Covid-19 for  individuals previously at risk of suicide

Kooth & Universities: Bolton, Manchester, 2022. Exploring the types of therapeutic goals set by university students

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The Therapeutic Goals Set by University Students in an Anonymous Web-Based Therapy and Support Setting

Examining concurrent validity and item selection of the Wants and Needs Outcome Measure (SWAN-OM) in a web-based therapy service. A research project in partnership with CORC.

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Validating the SWAN-OM single-session measure

Estimated cost-savings to the US market. This work aims to convert a United Kingdom (U.K.)-based evaluation and estimate the potential benefits of the Kooth program in the United States (U.S.) marketplace, including medical cost savings and reduction in negative mental health outcomes.

Kooth economic value model summary report

The Session Wants and Need Outcome Measure: The Development of a Brief Outcome Measure for Single-Sessions of Web-Based Support. Report in partnership with CORC.

Developing a bespoke measurement tool for single-sessions with young people and clinical experts: The SWAN-OM

The needs of the UK nation during COVID-19 lockdowns


Pulse Report, 2021 - The State of the Nation's Mental Health

Preventative support for young people with mental health concerns

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LSE 2021: Estimated cost-savings to the US market

How adults use the Kooth ‘positive virtual ecosystem

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The Theory of change for adults on Qwell in the UK

A positive virtual ecosystem. The theory of change for Kooth. Comprehensive Report 2020

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The Theory of Change for young people on Kooth in the UK

Kooth & Anna Freud, 2020. Contributing authors: Luís Costa da Silva (Luis.costa@annafreud.org), Aaron Sefi (asefi@kooth.com), Julian Edbrooke-Childs (Julian.childs@annafreud.org)

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Online counselling and goal achievement: Exploring meaningful change and the types of goals progressed by young people

Shaping the Design of Smartphone-Based Interventions for Self-Harm

Digital interventions for self-harm

The aim of the research was to gain an understanding of how young people use an online forum on Kooth for emotional and mental health issues. There was an investigation into what young people discuss and how they seek support on the forum and how the young service users responded to posts to gain an understanding of how young people provided each other with peer-to-peer support.

Peer Communication in Online Mental Health Forums for Young People: Directional and Nondirectional Support

This paper identified patterns of goal-based outcome (GBO) engagement in digital therapy for adults. Goals were examined for level of progress on goal, pattern of engagement with self-set vs. collaboratively-set goals and the influence of key presenting issues on goal progress. 

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The use of goal-based outcome measures in digital therapy with adults: What goals are set, and are they achieved?

This project explored the types of goals that young people want to achieve from online services. The challenges and opportunities that online counsellors have experienced when working with these goals were also explored. 

Therapeutic Goals in Online Youth Therapy

Universities of Manchester, Ionnina, 2014

University logos combined; Manchester & Ionnina

A Thematic Analysis of Preferences of Young People using Online Support to Discuss Suicide

All resources for schools

The resources for Schools and Teachers page is where you can find tools and tips on talking to young people about a range of mental health topics, plus signposting resources to help your students access Kooth whenever they need it.

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