Young People’s Experiences of having a sibling admitted to a Child & Adolescent Mental Health inpatient unit

Paper one is a literature review of eight published studies. It reviews research on the experiences of young people who have a sibling experiencing mental health difficulties. The findings identified that young people would like more information on their sibling’s difficulties and highlighted the lack of research with this population. This is despite clinicians and researchers identifying a need to better understand young people’s experiences. Furthermore, generalisability of the findings was often limited by the fact that data was gathered from parents and not the young people directly.
Paper two is an empirical study using the qualitative methodological approach, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. It explored the experiences of young people who had a sibling admitted to a mental health inpatient unit. 5 brothers of adolescent females were interviewed. Interviews were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings suggest young people experience changes in their family relationships as a result but have trouble expressing their own emotions and may use avoidance strategies to manage this. They also worry about not being able to support their sister enough and what their future may look like with mental health difficulties.
Paper three is an executive summary. This was written as an accessible document for clinicians working in Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services to help disseminate the findings from the empirical study. The rationale for the research, method, findings, limitations of the research and recommendations are summarised