YOCOM

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 University of Canberra and headspace National funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (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. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2025.1671364

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. https://virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/29993/submission/303

Core project team

Debra Rickwood (Distinguished Professor View profile)

Kelly Mazzer (Adjunct Associate Professor)

Sonia Curll (Research Officer)

Deepika Ratnaike (PhD Candidate)

Chief Investigators

• Debra Rickwood (University of Canberra)
• 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 (University of Canberra)
• 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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