Dr Jaimie Northam (USYD) & Priya Vaughan (USYD)

Title: A new age for youth mental health: practical considerations for research and practice

Abstract:

Youth mental health has been recognised as research priority by the Australian government with the goal of reducing long term harm and social and economic costs. Lived experience participation and engagement has also been emphasised to ensure interventions and outputs are meaningful and relevant to young people. However, any research that engages youth must acknowledge that young people have distinct experiences and needs to those of children and adults. Young people are more independent than children, and capable of great creativity and unique perspectives. But they are not yet adults and require varying levels of parental and societal support. As a result, young people have unique needs for psychological interventions, and how they’re engaged in research processes. How do we know we are getting their involvement right? And how can we involve young people in research in a meaningful way that drives our research, and also empowers and strengthens young people’s mental health?  In this talk, we argue that there are ways to meaningfully engage young people in research that benefits us as researchers, them as developing individuals, and the collective society. 

Dr Northam will present recent data regarding young people’s attitudes to mental health help-seeking and how this work is helping to inform development of a new digital mental health tool specifically for 12 to 17-year-olds. Dr Vaughan will share reflections about the co-production of MyBRANCHES, a digital, self-management tool for young people (16+) preparing to discharge from an Early Intervention in Psychosis Service. She will reflect on what the co-production process looked like ‘in real life’ (as opposed to the neat frameworks she’d seen in journal articles) and share learnings and challenges. Drawing on co-design and co-production approaches, Jaimie and Priya will close with an interactive discussion with the audience so we can collectively explore the steps we can take to better include our stakeholders in research.

Bios:

Dr Jaimie Northam is a Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist. She has been practicing as a psychologist working with young people for over 15 years and is passionate about supporting them and their parents meet the unique needs of this life stage. Currently, her work is based in the Child Behaviour Research Clinic where she provides treatment, supervision and conducts research focused on improving childhood mental health outcomes. 

Dr Priya Vaughan is a Research Fellow at the Central Clinical School (The University of Sydney) and at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course. Priya’s research focuses on collaborative and participatory research with people with lived experience. Recent research has focused on experiences of psychosis and schizophrenia, climate emotions,  and discrimination experienced by people with experience of both disability and mental distress.