The population groups of youth and mental health

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH
Mental health
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1MENTAL HEALTH
Introduction:
This report aims to provide a search strategy and search on database for six published
articles that gives answer to the topic of choice. The topic is related to the issue of suicide and
depression in young people and the main PICO question for the task are as follows:
In young people with depression (P?), what are the impact of perceptions and experience of
depression on suicide and depression outcome?
The significance of the above question is that it has been framed using the PICO format.
The significance of using this format is that it clearly defines the specific population,
intervention, comparison and outcome for a study. Thus, this form of questioning helps to refine
the research question and consider what should be included in the study too (Raich & Skelly,
2013). The above PICO question clearly defines the focus the research.
There are many rationales for investigating about perceptions and experience of
depression and suicide. Firstly, investigating about the topic is important because of high suicide
risks in depressed youths and high rate of depression a major concern for this population. The
report by Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2016) states that in prevalence of major
depressive disorder is high in young Australian population and this eventually increases the risk
of suicide, suicide ideation and self-harm behaviours. In young people aged 0-14 years, suicide
has become the leading cause of deaths. Thus, investigating the experience of this young people
with depression and suicide ideation may help to identify what factors contribute to depression
and risk of self-harm behaviours. The second rationale for choosing this research question is that
multiple factors increase the risk of depression and exploring the lived experience of these group
of youths may help to understand what interventions are needed to prevent depression and suicde

2MENTAL HEALTH
rates. From the concepts of sociological theories, the analysis of perception may help to
understand whether individual behaviour promotes such behaviour or there is connection with
other complex factors too (Geisner et al., 2015).
The above PICO question has been developed after revising it several times. Firstly,
PICO format was chosen as it is evidence based technique to frame and answer clinical questions
(Scells et al., 2017).Although PICO format was taken from the beginning to develop a clear and
focussed question, initially the research population taken was people with severe mental illness.
This was revised after interpreting the population group is too broad and selecting specific
disease and age group would give more value to the findings. Thus, the population groups of
youth and mental health disorder of depression was taken because depression is the leading cause
of illness and disability in this age group (World Health Organization, 2019). Hence, taking a
narrowed population group would enhance the value and applicability of research. Initially, there
was confusion regarding the outcome of interest. Depressive symptoms were taken as the
outcome initially. However, as depression and suicide are interconnected, it was finally decided
to take both in the outcome.
Methods:
To start with the process of searching for research literature, the first strategy was to look
for select high quality database. Three databases that were selected for searching articles include
CINAHL, PubMed and Medline. The rationale for selecting these databases is that they all are
high quality and renowned database that publishes research papers in the field of biomedical and
health care literature. PubMed provides free access to MEDLINE and even the possibility to get
access to full text articles. The initial search for papers without any pre-set filters was done in all

3MENTAL HEALTH
the three databases. The key search terms that were used included ‘depression’, ‘suicide’,
‘youths’, ‘young people’, ‘perception’ and experiences. These search terms were combined
together to ensure that more relevant papers were taken. No filters were applied at this stage.
During search for articles in CINAHL data, advance article searching was used so that
filters could be applied during the search process. The advantage of filter is that it helps to define
certain criteria for research. Search filters are also effective in defining specific criteria for
research and searching for specific subjects (Beale et al., 2019). Thus, search filters were applied
to save time and get reliable research paper. The first filter was applied related to research
publication date by selecting data from 2010 to 2019. Secondly, subject headings were chosen
from advanced search filters to get the most relevant data. Filters were also applied for language
and types of research papers. English language was chosen as the language and full text peer
reviewed articles as the type of source. Moreover, Boolean logic was used to increase the
possibility of getting the most relevant papers related to the research question. The following
table defines how truncations, synonyms and Boolean operators were used in place of each
search terms.
Search terms Synonyms Truncations Boolean operators
Depression Depressive disorder,
major depression,
depressed mood
Depress? Depression OR
depressive disorders
Depression AND
suicide in youths
Suicide Suicidal behaviour,
suicide ideation, self-
harm
Suicid? Suicide or suicidal
ideation
Suicide AND