My Story and Me
Secondary schools, Further Education colleges, and youth organisations are invited to test a new intervention to support the mental health of young women and girls.
About My Story and Me
My Story and Me is a new preventative mental health intervention for young women and girls. It aims to help young women (aged 14-18 years) to understand and talk about their own mental health by hearing the stories of other young women like them. The stories were created by young women from various ethnic, neurodivergent, and LGBTQIA+ backgrounds.
The intervention has three parts:
Young women will watch a video of another young woman’s mental health story.
Young women will then create (by talking, video, text, or picture) their own story, which has three parts:
a) ‘Who am I?
b) What is My Mental Health Story?
c)How would I Like to be Supported?’.
There will be guidance on how young women can talk about their story with others and where to find support.
We welcome gender diversity in this project and use the terms ‘girl’ and ‘young woman’ inclusively.
The research project
The aim of this research project is to find out what girls and young women think about My Story and Me and whether it is helpful. This research project is led by Anna Freud who are working with University College London (UCL), King’s College London, University of Manchester, University of Oxford, Centre for Mental Health, and Gendered Intelligence. It is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
The study will run from September 2025 – May 2026.
We are carrying out an 18-month feasibility study to test My Story and Me in secondary schools, Further Education colleges, and community organisations.
Recruitment for the trial
We will recruit 120 young women to use the intervention and complete questionnaires to see what impact it has. The learnings from the trial will help us prepare for a larger study, called a full trial, with many more young women taking part.
Find out more about the trial
