Assessing mistrust in young people
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Assessing mistrust in young people: A study in child and adolescent services
IRAS ID
231285
Contact name
Jessica Bird
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 0 days
Research summary
In everyday life, we all make decisions about whether to trust other people. Sometimes, it can be difficult to trust people and we might feel suspicious about others. Trust has been described as a decision to depend on others in the face of vulnerability and uncertainty, involving a judgment about another’s intentions towards you. Our ability to trust others is thought to exist on a continuum, with some people feeling overly mistrustful and suspicious of others. Excessive mistrust is technically called ‘paranoia’ in psychiatry, defined as the unfounded fear that others are intentionally trying to harm you.
Research shows that feeling very mistrustful may be a common problem during adolescence. However, very little is known about how these issues affect young people. Notably, it is currently unclear how common these difficulties are in young people accessing treatment from child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). This would help us understand if services need to develop better ways of assessing and treating these problems in youth.
The present study involves inserting a single mistrust questionnaire into routine service data collection in child and adolescent mental health services. This has four objectives. First, to assess levels of mistrust (paranoid thoughts/suspiciousness) in young people attending child and mental health services. Second, to assess the associations between mistrust and routine clinical measures. Third, for a subgroup of participants with available follow up data, we aim to assess the effect of paranoia on young people’s difficulties over time. Fourth, we hope to assess the properties of a new mistrust questionnaire in a clinical sample of adolescents.
REC name
South Central - Oxford B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/SC/0539
Date of REC Opinion
7 Nov 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion