Self-management, self-care, and self-help in adolescents with emotional problems: a scoping review protocol

The objective of this scoping review is to clarify the ways in which the concepts of self-management, self-care, and self-help are defined in the literature in the context of adolescents with emotional problems, as well as to identify the strategies or techniques that have been proposed to facilitate self-management, self-care, and self-help for this group.

There is evidence that emotional problems are rising amongst adolescents, yet timely access to specialist mental health treatment is limited to adolescents with greater severity of mental health difficulties. Nonetheless, self-management, self-care, and self-help strategies may be used by adolescents. Given the overlap in existing definitions and the lack of clarity around these concepts in a youth mental health context, a scoping review of the literature is warranted.

The review will consider studies that involve adolescents aged 10 to 19 years with symptoms of emotional problems. These problems do not require a formal diagnosis and may be based on self-reporting. Studies that reference self-management, self-care, or self-help in this population, in any setting, will be included. Strategies may be provided by a mental health professional or discovered by the adolescent on their own. Quantitative, qualitative, economic, and mixed methods studies, as well as systematic, scoping, and literature reviews, are eligible for inclusion.

MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, Web of Science, CINAHL, Google Scholar, and MedNar will be searched for English-language texts from the year 2000 onward. A map or typology of definitions will be presented alongside a narrative summary of the results.