Case studies

In This Section

Read about what past Fellows have achieved through their participation in the program:

Jessica Stubbing

Jessica Stubbing is a 2021 fellow from New Zealand. Jessica is a clinical psychologist and research fellow passionate about an improved mental health system through youth participation in service development and design.

Jessica’s project idea for youth participation in service development and design came from her PhD research and her own lived experience. Jessica’s idea was clear and there was a need within the community for this type of work, however she was unsure on how to engage with the right stakeholders, apart from those in academia, to bring her idea to life.

Throughout the first three months of the fellowship, Jessica attended modules which helped her to understand the importance of academic research and lived experience knowledge, to communicate why her project was important.

Jessica worked closely with her peer mentor, Jenny, who had extensive experience in creating and managing partnerships. Her mentor supported Jessica to tailor her pitch to three definitive stakeholder groups – clinicians, health services and policy makers.

In the final three months of the fellowship, the modules supported Jessica with more tangible skills such as impact evaluation, fundraising, and increasing her social media presence. These modules, alongside the input of her expert mentor, supported Jessica to translate her research publications into a policy white paper, and provided opportunities for Jessica to speak about her project to policy makers and on broadcasted television.

The fellowship journey also contributed to Jessica’s decision to move into a policy-focused youth mental health role with Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures and work with the New Zealand Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission.

Tricia Tan case study

Tricia Tan is a 2022 fellow from Singapore. Tricia is a medical student who decided to take a gap year to pursue an internship with the Singaporean Ministry of Health, to support the mental health of young people. Tricia is also the founder of Singapore’s first National Youth Advisory Group for mindline.sg, a government digital mental health initiative.

Identifying a need

By the time Tricia entered the fellowship, Tricia had identified that service fragmentation and lack of trust in public systems were prominent barriers to young people seeking mental health support in Singapore. Tricia had identified this problem through multiple consultations with young people in Singapore across 2021 and early 2022.

In response, Tricia’s proposal for change was based on adapting the headspace model (or integrated youth mental health service model) to the Singaporean context. The fellowship supported Tricia to develop deeper and wider connections with integrated youth mental health services around the world including @ease in the Netherlands and Orygen and headspace in Australia. Tricia also developed a close relationship with a senior headspace Australia manager through the fellowship’s expert mentoring.

Through these connections, Tricia had the opportunity to conduct site visits to Orygen and headspace in Melbourne, Australia in June 2022. The site visits supported Tricia to see and experience the integrated services in action, which informed the design and development of the key elements of a Singaporean service named d.well.

Launching d.well

The key elements of d.well were determined to be community activities, mental health, social service support, peer support, family support, career and education coaching and physical health.

The fellowship education and training modules also supported Tricia to explore her own story, perfect her pitch and speak confidently in any circumstance.

Following Tricia’s completion of the fellowship, Tricia has had the opportunity to pitch her d.well proposal to the Singaporean Ministry of Health. The ministry has officially accepted her proposal to start up d.well in Singapore and has allocated funding and a specific location for the first centre.

Through Tricia’s connection with Orygen Global, she has also had the opportunity to train other clinicians, academics and young people from around the world in youth mental health policymaking at the 2022 International Association of Youth Mental Health conference.

Judah Njoroge case study

Judah Njoroge Wambui is a 2022 fellow from Kenya with a lived experience of mental health and the founder of Integrative Wellbeing and Youth Against Suicide.

Judah applied to the fellowship because he is passionate about equipping young people with informational awareness on their mental health and human rights. Judah entered the fellowship with a specific pilot project Mental health and me, aimed at raising awareness on mental health challenges faced by young people, promoting personal development and co-creating approaches to addressing issues.

Judah had already secured partial funding to trial implementation of the group program in a few local schools but required further training in operationalising, sustaining and scaling his project.

Judah shared that the fellowship had a number of impacts on his professional and personal advocacy journey including:

Capacity building – “I have developed several tools for advocacy that have made me confident enough to go after opportunities and doors that before the fellowship I would not dream of even reaching. I have learnt to create a working plan and execute it,” Judah said.
Specialisation –“The lessons I have received helped me re-evaluate my approaches and plans and form a more specific line of focus in my advocacy, which is the digitisation of mental health solutions, and solution delivery and research to be able to share what is working for my community to the academic stakeholders in mental health,” Judah said.
Networking and mentorship – “I was able to link with someone who has gone through a similar journey and our interaction goes a long way in helping to reaffirm my purpose and trajectory in the advocacy journey. The mentorship has also exposed me to opportunities that I would otherwise not have obtained on my own,” Judah said.
Personal development – “The fellowship taught me that it is okay to have fun, be myself and achieve holistic growth while still being the change I want to see by giving me the actual tools implement at the same,” Judah said.