By London YPAG,
GOSH YPAG are particularly interested in mental health research and have been involved in supporting researchers in mental health research projects. They also like to get involved in events outside of their 6 annual GOSH YPAG meetings.
Read on below to hear from GOSH YPAG member Arub who got involved in an opportunity to mark Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week and the organiser who worked with her.
For early career researchers in the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London to learn about how they can involve young people in their research about children and young people’s mental health.
I strongly believe in the value of young voices in shaping the future of research. Through my involvement with GOSH YPAG, I’ve seen firsthand how young people can provide unique perspectives that enhance research design, making it more inclusive, relevant, and impactful. Participating in this event meant that I could contribute and share what I had learnt from GOSH YPAG meetings and apply them to the questions being asked from the panel.
Receiving the questions in advance. This allowed me to thoughtfully articulate my responses and note down key points I wanted to share with the audience. Since I find that writing down my thoughts helps me retain them better, this preparation enabled me to speak with greater confidence and express my ideas more clearly and effectively during the event. Additionally, I met Eva half an hour before the event, and we sat down to discuss my answers which was super helpful. I was able to quickly summarise my main points for all the questions that were going to be asked!
One of the key takeaways from the event was realising just how much researchers truly value the perspectives of young people with lived experience. Initially, I had assumed that researchers would already have everything figured out and that our role as young advisors might be more of a ‘tick-box’ exercise. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was both eye-opening and incredibly touching to see that our opinions were not only welcomed but actively sought after. This experience reinforced the importance of young people in research and showed me how meaningful our contributions can be in shaping studies that genuinely reflect the needs of those they aim to benefit.
Absolutely go for it! I’d advise other young people to be open-minded, take initiative, and not be afraid to share their experiences—because even the smallest contributions can make a big difference. More importantly, there is so much more to gain and very little to lose. Getting involved in opportunities outside of GOSH YPAG meetings allows you to gain invaluable experience, broaden your perspective and develop new skills!
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this experience, it’s that young people aren’t just the future of research—we’re the present. Our voices, experiences and insights matter! We can make research more effective, inclusive and meaningful. So, to any young person who also wants to get involved, speak up and get involved. You have no idea how much your input can make a difference.
One thing which felt really important from this event was that young people recognised that not all PPI feels equally inclusive and meaningful. For example, young people spoke about the importance of researchers that make an effort to get to know them, make them feel comfortable and identify clear ways in which there is scope for young people to shape the research. It felt really important that at this event we don’t just encourage early career researchers to engage in PPI, but to be really thoughtful about doing this in ways that really allow them to make changes to the research they are conducting.
We had such fantastic responses from our young people attending. They reflected that PPI is so important for researchers, young people and the wider community. Researchers have an opportunity to refine their research to make it more feasible and effective. Young people have a chance to develop new skills, have new experiences and to make a change in an area they feel strongly about. The wider community benefit because research is more able to reach groups we don’t always hear from, and we are able to learn important information that helps shape things for the better.
It’s all very well for researchers to share their experience of what works well in including young people in research. However, the real experts are young people themselves – who have experienced what really works well in helping create meaningful, impactful, accessible opportunities for young people to inform research. Therefore, it felt really important to have young people’s voices front and centre at this event. Indeed, after the event it was the young people’s contributions that made the biggest impression on our attendees from their comments afterwards.
A young person’s and researcher’s perspective on attending a YPAG meeting in Nottingham.
Esme, Nicke and Freya explore research at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH).
We play Pictionary using research concepts intead of the usual game cards, allocated to different levels of difficulty.
