King's College London

Girls and women are three times more likely than boys and men to struggle with anxiety and depression. We are trying to understand how and why.

Using an interdisciplinary, international, and intersectional approach and working closely with young people throughout, Bridging Divides aims to transform understandings of the causes of the gender mental health gap.

Funded by the Wellcome Trust, and run in partnership with King's College London, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, The McPin Foundation, University College London, and the Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, our team is made up of social scientists, biologists, and young people from the UK and Japan.

Youth-led research is at the heart of the Bridging Divides project. Young leaders and co-researchers from London and Tokyo play a central role in shaping the research. They work closely with researchers as equal partners, helping to guide the project from design to dissemination. Their lived experience helps make sure the research reflects the real voices and experiences of young people today. By working together across both countries, they also bring important insight into cultural differences and shared experiences, helping to make the research relevant and comparable in both places.

We also run workshops with young people, and with adults who work with them, in our partner schools and youth advocacy and support organisations. This will help us include a wider range of voices in the design of the research and in how we interpret the findings.

Researching sexism, misogyny and gender inequality (SMGI) in three ways

We’re working with young people to understand experiences of SMGI and the interplay of the brain, body, and society. This project is organised into research areas:

1. Data collection

Questionnaires:

• With young people (aged 11-19) in London and Tokyo.
• Examining gendered experiences and mental health, including how SMGI and mental health change over time.

Experience and hormone tracking:

• Examining daily experiences of SMGI, mood and hormonal changes.
• Young people will complete short smartphone-based questions.
• Some will also provide biological, sleep and activity data.

Interviews:

• With young people aged 13-24.
• Exploring experiences of SMGI, puberty and life transitions, and how these affect mental health.

2. Data analysis 

Analysing existing datasets:

• Using existing datasets to develop new measures of sexism.
• Examining how sexism contributes to gender gaps in young people’s mental health.

Data analytics and methods:

• Causality-informed quantitative methods to examine how sex and sexism shape gender inequalities in mental health.
• Methods include g-methods, formal mediation analysis and directed acyclic graphs.

3. New measure

Understanding mechanisms:

• Examining how SMGI and puberty-related factors shape mental health and gender gaps in London and Tokyo to improve future support.

Creating a new measure:

• Co-creating, testing and refining a new SMGI measure for 11–18 year olds with young people and experts.

Young people's experiences of SMGI and mental health can vary in different parts of the world. This project takes place across two sites, London and Tokyo. Emotional health trajectories are around four times worse amongst teenage girls in London than in Tokyo, and by the age of 16 the gender mental health gap is around twice as large in London.

Different risk factors (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic, the acceptance or rejection of gender norms) affect boys and girls differently in each country. By carrying out this research in both the UK and Japan, we can gain richer insights that one country alone may not provide.

This current phase of Bridging Divides leads on from Bridging Divides Phase 1, which included workshops in schools, in both London and Tokyo, to gather young people’s thoughts and opinions on the underlying causes of the gender mental health gap, on what sexism means to them and the different ways in which they experience it.

Investigators

• Dario Moreno-Agostino (University College London)
• Vanessa Pinfold (McPin Foundation)
• Paola Dazzan (King's College London)
• Syudo Yamasaki (TMIMS)
• Mitsuhiro Miyashita (TMIMS)
• Kiyoto Kasai (TMIMS)