Young people’s perspective on technology-enabled personalised youth mental health care for depression in the UK

Objectives

While new models of youth mental health care will be introduced in the United Kingdom (UK) as part of the NHS’s Long Term Plan, little is known about how to design and implement these models for depression. This study investigated young people’s perspective on the key attributes of technology-enabled personalised youth mental health care for depression to ensure the crucial components are implemented.

Methods

Qualitative data of young people’s perspectives was collected over two phases. In phase 1, 37 young people participated in interviews where they were presented with two depression vignettes differentiated by clinical stage and asked to outline the key attributes of care. In phase 2, 8 young people participated in a group workshop co-designing digital care pathways. Recordings were analysed thematically to identify key service, model, and digitised care attributes.

Results

Key service attributes emphasised youth-friendly, welcoming environments allowing for timely access to care. Key model attributes included needs-led care, supported by youth and family engagement, personalised care planning, care coordination, monitoring, and peer support. Key attributes of digitised care included facilitating access to care, centralised assessments, patient decision aid, monitoring, and design principles of flexibility and human assistance.

Conclusions

The results suggest that evidence-informed methods of delivering care based on individual needs is critical to personalised care and that the implementation of this model entails specific configuration of highly personalised and measurement-based capabilities within youth mental health services. In line with this, a digitised care pathway for delivering personalised care for depression is presented.

Public interest summary

Personalised care reforms in the United Kingdom (UK) will see the implementation of technology-enabled, youth specific models of care supported by emerging health technologies. An analysis of young people’s perspective of these models indicated that delivery of technology-enabled personalised youth mental health care can be defined in terms of service characteristics, service model, and digitised care pathways. Young people propose that services should be youth friendly and easy to access, while care should be tailored to individual needs and preferences. Treatments should also be organised on as needed bases with youth having greater choice. Digitised care pathways were proposed to help reduce barriers to care and streamline pathways from screening to referrals, assessments and transfers between services. The results are used to prototype a digitised care pathway for delivering personalised care for depression within youth mental health services in the UK.