The H.E.A.L.T.H. Project: Help Enabling Active Lifestyles Toward Health in Young People With Depression.

Exercise as an adjunct to routine treatment may be useful for helping young people recover from distressing mental health problems, but they seldom get sufficient support to help them to exercise. The reasons for this may be that services cannot agree on the benefits of exercise, and the lack of reliable evidence showing the benefits of exercise in young people who use mental health services. Compliance with prescribed exercise is generally low, but the investigators think that relatively few young people will drop out of our specially designed programme. The investigators have found that young 'healthy' people may respond better if exercise is matched to their ability. The investigators are not sure if this would work with young people with mental health difficulties, so the investigators want to test it. The investigators have also found that our enabling exercise plan, with social support and motivational coaching, helps people with depression to take part, and not to drop out. The aims of our study are to see if exercise matched to their ability, with support in taking part, helps young people recover from distressing mental health difficulties. The investigators also want to ask young people how they feel about exercise as a part of their recovery. The investigators want to see if motivational coaching can help ongoing participation in exercise, and the investigators want to follow up the young people after six months to see if they are still doing exercise. The investigators believe that this study is important because it will help young people feel better about themselves, and improve their quality of life. This is an important national public health goal and should enable young people to grow into healthy adults, and maintain their health throughout adulthood. If our study is successful, the investigators believe that it has the potential to change the way in which mental health services deliver care to young people. If the investigators can help young people feel better about themselves, and improve their general health and well being through exercise, the investigators may reduce their reliance on mental health services.

Research hypotheses A tailored exercise intervention will lead to significantly improved mental health outcomes and reduced exercise attrition rates in young people with depression.