Project Summary

This project aims to address the evidence gap for the effectiveness of digital mental health interventions for young people by developing and testing a new way to measure and track both client outcomes and clinician actions in real-time during online chat service delivery. 

Specific objectives include:

• Defining appropriate client outcomes and clinician actions for youth digital mental health services
• Developing and testing machine learning models that can track these outcomes and actions in real-time
• Designing a clinician console (dashboard) for real-time feedback during online chat sessions
• Evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of this approach in online chat service delivery

Funding

The project is a Partnership Project between Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­³öÆ· and funded by the (GNT2032120).

Research Outputs

Journal articles

Curll, S., Mazzer, K., Albrecht, S., Barbic, S., Fitzgerald, A., Kõlves, K., ... & Rickwood, D. (2025). Consensus derived client outcomes and clinician actions for youth online chat mental health services: A Delphi study. Frontiers in Digital Health, 7, 1671364.

Conference presentations

Rickwood, D., & Mazzer, K. (2025, March 20). Global Innovations in Outcome Measurement: Using machine learning to rethink outcome measurement—defining change measures for online chat youth mental health services using machine learning [Symposium presentation]. IAYMH, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Core project team

Debra Rickwood (Distinguished Professor )

Kelly Mazzer (Adjunct Associate Professor)

Sonia Curll (Research Officer)

Deepika Ratnaike (PhD Candidate)

Chief Investigators

• Debra Rickwood (Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­³öÆ·)
• Nickolai Titov (Macquarie University)
• Roland Goecke (University of New South Wales)
• Philip Batterham (Australian National University)
• Kairi Kolves (Griffith University)
• Britt Klein (Federation University Australia)
• Dominic Dwyer (University of Melbourne)
• Kelly Mazzer (Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­³öÆ·)
• Amanda Fitzgerald (University College Dublin)
• Skye Barbic (University of British Columbia)

Associate Investigators (headspace)

• Dure de Winter (Participation and lived experience)
• Nic Telford (Evaluation and monitoring)
• Carsten Schley (Digital mental health programs)
• Sabina Albrecht (Evaluation and monitoring)
• David van Golstein Brouwers (Data and reporting)
• Anna Hall (Digital and technology)
• Vikki Ryall (Clinical practice)
• Nick Duigan (Digital mental health programs)

Co-Design

End-user value is critical to this project, and will be ensured by multiple levels of engagement, including our Youth Co-Design Group, Clinician Co-Design Group, and Phase-specific Steering Groups.

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