In my last article, I discussed the recent peer-reviewed research paper from the York Health Economics Consortium (YHEC), commissioned by Kooth. It provides an economic evaluation of our mental health platform for children and young people (CYP), and details how Kooth can save UK public services - including the NHS - money.
This month, I want to delve a bit deeper into the positive mental health impacts and outcomes that CYP have experienced from Kooth’s services.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) conducted an independent evaluation of the Kooth platform to explore how it supports young people. The research team surveyed 302 CYP when they first accessed Kooth and again a month later to understand whether they had experienced positive mental health outcomes.
CYP benefitted from improvements across nearly all mental health and wellbeing measures after just one month of using Kooth’s web-based platform. These included significant reductions in psychological distress, suicidal ideation, self-harm and loneliness. On average, Kooth users experienced the following meaningful improvements:
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20% fewer reports of self-harm
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15% increase in confidence that their hopes can be met
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13% reduction in loneliness
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12% increase in self-esteem
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11% reduction in psychological distress (low mood and anxiety)
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9% reduction in thoughts of suicide
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8% less arguing with parents
Interestingly, over the month, 70% reported using Kooth twice or more, and 88% said they were likely to use Kooth again in the future.
These improvements in mental wellbeing are vitally important not only for the individuals themselves, but also for their supporting friends, families, carers and communities.
Similar benefits were experienced whether CYP used only the community / peer parts of Kooth - which includes therapeutic resources, discussion forums and mini activities - or if they also engaged with Kooth’s counselling sessions. Overall, 94% of Kooth users engaged with ‘self help’ community features.
There was also evidence that using Kooth may help users make more appropriate and effective use of formal services. After using Kooth, 77% of users were more likely to seek mental health support, and 73% felt more confident about how to seek help.
The real human impact of these benefits to mental wellbeing and crisis prevention is modelled in the economic evaluation. For every 2,160 CYP that use Kooth, around 19 hospitalisations will be averted due to reduced thoughts of suicide and self harm, and three fewer instances of crime will be committed. There will also be 20 fewer smokers and 24 fewer binge drinkers, which are maladaptive behaviours and can lead to longer-term health issues. If scaled up to the one-in-five CYP in need across the UK, around 160,000 young people would experience reduced thoughts of suicide and self-harm (leading to more than 27,000 avoided hospitalisations), and over 5,000 crimes would be averted!
Commissioned by the NHS, local authorities, charities, and businesses, Kooth provides an online community of peers and a team of professional mental health practitioners. Our services are safe, with all content on the platform being pre-moderated by a specialist team of trained professionals. The platform is designed to support the growing mental health needs of young people, offering them the help they need when they need it.
This research highlights the effectiveness of Kooth in providing preventative and often life-changing mental health support to CYP.
We will continue our commitment to expand Kooth’s services to support as many young people as possible.
Want to dive deeper? You can check out the peer-reviewed article here and full report here.
Written by Dr Jonathan Gledhill, Commercial Director, Kooth