Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic and associated mitigation efforts have posed multiple challenges to young people’s mental health and wellbeing, including feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and lack of purpose [
1‐
3]. Despite longstanding sociological accounts of childhood that theorise young people as citizens and social actors in their own right [
4], young people have been largely sidelined in the COVID-19 crisis response. In the UK, the voices of young people have been noticeably absent from key decisions, such as school closures and changes in educational assessment procedures, giving rise to feelings of exclusion and lack of control [
5,
6]. In the context of mental health, while numerous research projects tracked outcomes for young people [
7], more investment and effort could be made to support adolescents to take an active role in both the design and delivery of mental health and wellbeing interventions during this time.
Adolescent involvement in the delivery of interventions targeting young people’s mental health and wellbeing is a widely used approach [
8]. Peer-led interventions typically involve selecting and training a group of adolescents to provide emotional support to similar-aged youth and/or teach them key skills to manage their mental health. This is implemented through dyadic or group-based interactions, often with guidance and support from adults. While peer-led interventions are often used as a tool to support adolescents’ mental health and wellbeing in schools [
9,
10], online approaches have attracted growing attention [
11]. Researchers have specifically highlighted their potential benefits during the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, given social distancing requirements separating young people from their typical support networks [
12‐
15].
Peer-led interventions are a promising approach for multiple reasons. During adolescence, emotional investment is reoriented from parents to peers, increasing self-disclosure within peer networks [
16]. Young people tend to turn to peers for support and comfort [
17] and positive peer relationships are associated with improved mental health and wellbeing [
18]. Within peer-led interventions, peer leaders are perceived by supported peers as assuming a dual role of equal and mentor—someone who is relatable and provides companionship while also acting as a role model [
19]. This provides a promising context to learn socioemotional skills, especially given young people’s high sensitivity to peers’ recognition and influence [
20,
21].
Despite these benefits, current evidence to support the positive outcomes of peer-led interventions for young people’s mental health and wellbeing is limited and inconclusive. In a recent review of peer-led school interventions, only two out of five identified studies documented benefits for supported young people’s self-confidence and quality of life, with one suggesting a negative impact on general mental health [
22]. Similarly, in a systematic review of digital interventions, only two out of five studies, which evaluated structured interventions targeting anxiety and tobacco use, demonstrated positive mental health outcomes. The remaining studies, mostly involving unmoderated online boards, yielded null results [
23]. Training and support from adult stakeholders for peer leaders may play a crucial role in achieving positive outcomes for the recipients of peer-delivered programs. Importantly, neither of the reviews reported that the training provided to peer leaders was evidence-based. Furthermore, the type and extent of training and support for peer leaders varied considerably across the studies.
Considerable heterogeneity across existing studies both in relation to study design (e.g., target population, outcomes assessed) and intervention characteristics (e.g., intervention content, delivery format) makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the efficacy of peer-led interventions, even in the short term. Indeed, both existing reviews pointed to the need for randomised controlled studies to test the impact of peer-led interventions on supported peers, since much of the evidence base consists of quasi-experiments or pre-post designs. Moreover, to our knowledge no studies have designed or evaluated peer-led interventions targeting young people’s mental health and wellbeing either in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic or other health crises.
Another key shortcoming of the current literature is the lack of youth involvement in the
design of peer-led interventions and intervention evaluation studies. Many existing studies only involve adolescents at the implementation stage (see [
23]), yet several researchers highlight the importance of building ownership and engaging young people in the development and evaluation of new interventions [
24‐
26]. Involving young people as active stakeholders in designing interventions can help ensure youth-friendly programmes that address adolescents’ specific mental health needs [
27,
28]. Active youth involvement also supports young people’s right to citizenship and participation, particularly during a time of deep uncertainties such as the COVID-19 pandemic [
6,
29].
In the present study, our research team partnered with peer support specialists from the charity Youth Era (
www.youthera.org) and young people to develop a peer-led, online intervention (
Coping During COVID) designed to target the socioemotional challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of UK youth.
Coping During COVID is a group-based course, co-delivered by adolescents (peer leaders) in partnership and with support from adult peer support specialists. Peer leaders delivering the course received training in online peer support through an evidence-based programme called “Uplift”, trialled in a previous study [
30].
Coping During COVID was designed to provide young people with the opportunity to connect and share experiences with an online peer community during the pandemic, while learning emotional coping skills.
Through a randomised controlled trial, we investigated whether
Coping during COVID improved the wellbeing of young people aged 16–18 years living through the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. We also investigated whether the intervention had benefits in relation to additional intervention-targets, including young people’s social connectedness to peers, emotional coping skills, sense of purpose, self-esteem and self-compassion. These outcomes were all identified as key for young people’s mental wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic during initial consultations with groups of UK adolescents aged 16–18 years at the start of the pandemic [
30]. Given that this is the first evaluation of this intervention, and that immediate effects of peer-led interventions have not yet been established [
22,
23], we investigated short-term benefits to supported peers, relative to a wait-list control. Through open questions we also investigated young people’s perceived impact of the intervention in their lives, and young people’s plans to use the skills they learnt in the future.
Discussion
Our randomised controlled trial tested the efficacy of a peer-led intervention to support young people’s wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic, delivered online and in groups over a period of 5 days. The intervention increased young people’s wellbeing, as well as their social connectedness, emotional coping skills, sense of purpose, self-esteem and self-compassion, compared to waitlist controls. Consistent with the quantitative results, participants in the intervention group described that they learnt helpful strategies to promote their mental health and wellbeing, gained a sense of connectedness to peers, and improved their sense of purpose. Participants expressed intentions to apply what they had learnt in their lives moving forward, not only to promote their own wellbeing but also to help their friends, peers, and community at large. These results complement our previous trial [
30], which demonstrated the efficacy of the Uplift Peer Support Training Programme on young people’s perceived ability to help others and self-reported compassion. We now document benefits to adolescents
receiving support from these trained adolescents through a structured peer-led programme.
Online interventions that provide an opportunity for young people to learn socioemotional skills are critical in the pandemic context, given the high incidence of mental distress, including anxiety, grief and uncertainty [
1‐
3]. The chance to connect with a group of peers might also help alleviate negative psychological effects of COVID-19 mitigation measures, given the potential harmful effects of physical distancing and restricted social contact for adolescent mental health [
40].
The benefits of ‘Coping during COVID’ may extend beyond the pandemic context, as it addresses prevalent challenges. Indeed, our findings are consistent with positive outcomes reported in previous evaluations of online peer-led interventions for adolescents [
23]. Notably, previous interventions showing positive results incorporated structured peer-to-peer support sessions and training and mentorship from experts for peer leaders, distinguishing them from spontaneous support in online forums. More specifically, two previous trials indicated that one-to-one online interventions delivered by trained peer counsellors were effective in reducing symptoms of anxiety [
41] and supporting smoking cessation [
42]. Our findings add to this literature, demonstrating that a short, structured, group online intervention can also produce benefits for adolescent wellbeing and related outcomes, including social connectedness and sense of purpose.
Critically, the
Coping During COVID intervention inspired adolescents to use the skills they learned to help their peers and community in the future. This might have been due to the fact that the intervention directly invited participants to reflect on their sense of purpose, but it is also possible that the peer leaders provided a positive, prosocial role-model for those receiving the intervention. This is in line with previous research suggesting that during middle-adolescence young people are susceptible to prosocial influence from peers [
20,
21]. To facilitate a potential ripple effect in peer communities, future interventions could integrate peer leader training at the end of the intervention, to prepare adolescents to “pass on” what they learnt. Such “train-the-trainer” models have been used effectively to support sustainability of other types of intervention, for instance in the field of sexual and reproductive health [
43].
Youth-adult partnerships and future directions
Our study was driven by priorities voiced by young people at the start of the pandemic [
30], and involved groups of adolescents in the design of the intervention and throughout the research process. Such extensive youth involvement was key to ensure the programme and research met young people’s specific needs and felt meaningful to them. It is possible that close and continued youth involvement is an important factor in determining whether peer-led interventions are effective, a possibility that should be explored in future research to help reconcile mixed findings.
Future research should also explore the impact of adult involvement in training and delivering peer-led programmes. We believe that the adult support peer leaders received during the course was critical for the safe and effective delivery of the intervention during an emotionally challenging time. Subsequent studies should investigate mediators of peer-led intervention effects across various outcomes to identify critical intervention components and determine the optimal level of training and adult support.
As our study focused on adolescents within a narrow age range, with equivalent ages between peer leaders and supported peers, it is uncertain whether comparable outcomes would emerge in different age groups or mixed-age settings. Additionally, we recruited previously unacquainted youth across the UK, so it remains to be seen whether similar outcomes would be observed in groups who already know one another, or in an in-person setting. More particularly, given that peer-led school interventions targeting youth mental health are often used in schools, despite the sparse evidence-base, adapting this intervention and testing its efficacy in school settings, either online or offline, would help advance the field. It is, however, worth noting that feedback from both YPAGs who supported this project, and initial evidence from our qualitative results, suggested that having the intervention delivered to groups of strangers made participants more comfortable to talk about mental health. Researchers working on peer-led school interventions should investigate whether and why the school environment might pose barriers to young people feeling safe to ‘open up’ and share emotional difficulties.
Acknowledgements
We thank Youth Era, in particular, Tia Barnes and Martin Rafferty for leading the co-design of the Coping During Covid course, and the Uplift peer leaders who supported the design and co-delivered the course. We thank the NeurOX YPAG and the Uplift YPAG for their input throughout the project. GP, TR and GM were funded by a Westminster Foundation grant to IS and GP. IS, GP and GM were, in addition, supported by a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award to IS (104825/Z/14/Z). IS was also supported by the NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre under Grant NIHR203316 and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, which is supported by core funding from the Wellcome Trust under Grant 203132/Z/16/Z. GP is, in addition, funded by an NDPH Intermediate Fellowship. The funders of the study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, decision to publish or paper writing. Youth Era gave minimal input into the study design, had no access to the data or the survey platform for the duration of the study, and were not involved in data analysis, decision to publish or paper writing. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.
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