Illustrations by Ida Henrich

Last month, our research team had a very energising meeting about how we could have a bigger positive impact on the mental health of young women and non-binary people, by conducting research that could help shape policy. And thus our research journey began! We noted down a few main goals which you can read about here.

Since then, our research programme has been well underway, and it has a number of strands to engage as many people as possible. Ellen and Josie have been carrying out polls and votes on our Fearless Femme Instagram and Twitter accounts. This is the first stepping stone to creating a large body of data and research that will hopefully help Fearless Femme get a good sense of what our readers and contributors think are the main factors that have an impact on their mental health. We’re particularly interested in mental health and further/higher education, and identifying potential changes to mental health policy.

We’ve gathered a few interesting points so far. To begin with, 40% of Twitter poll participants told us that they don’t feel able to shape mental health policy.

“40% of Twitter poll participants told us that they don’t feel able to shape mental health policy.”

We were concerned about this, but also glad to hear that 19% (almost one in five) do feel able to help shape mental health policy (27% and 14% felt they were somewhat able or unsure, respectively). This was a bit of a contrast to what we found on Instagram – a simple yes or no poll – which showed that 77% of Instagram followers do not feel able to shape mental health policy and 23% do feel able. Regardless of social media platform disparity, in both cases the majority of respondents felt that they had no say over policy.

We carried out two further polls investigating what needs to change – hopefully giving a voice to those followers and readers who don’t feel able to shape policy. It became apparent that more counselling places (33%) and less stigma in society (34%) are what our Twitter followers believe are most necessary for positive change. In our third poll, we discovered that early education on mental health might be the best way to alleviate the aforementioned stigma (59% of voters placed emphasis on this option).

Some Twitter users had interesting input, stating that more education on mental health is not necessarily an improvement – what is perhaps needed is better education on mental health, and if introduced it should be monitored carefully for impact. This is something we are hoping to work into any policy reform suggestions that we may present: that changes need to be implemented correctly, and evaluated, rather than just implemented.

We’ve also been gathering more intricate data in a survey that Eve designed, which examines the state of young women and non-binary people’s mental health and the main challenges they are facing, as well as seeking to discover the extent to which Fearless Femme Magazine is helping readers and contributors manage their challenges by therapeutically writing, painting, creating, sharing and reading mental health stories. You can still take part in the survey here. We’ll post the results of this survey here next month.

It is important for us to us to create this research blog too, so you can follow our journey. We’ll update this blog monthly to keep readers in the know about all the interesting things we find and make it clear what’s happening behind the scenes. Creating conversations around this research – which ultimately helps to reduce stigma around mental health – is as vital as statistics and numbers, so please do #TellFearlessFemme your suggestions. We are a platform to have your voice heard – use us!