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Projects

Low intensity and early intervention model

Over the past 15 years, many countries have developed their own model of youth mental health care. These have largely evolved around an integrated care model within a youth hub, such as headspace in Australia and Foundry in Canada. While these models have been widely successful in adapting to other high-resource settings, the same cannot be said for programs in low- and middle-resource settings. As a result, many low- and middle-resource settings are examining models that require less resource allocation and access to a specialist youth mental health workforce.

Orygen Global is leading a project to better understand the low-intensity and early intervention model approach to support young people’s mental health and wellbeing and how this could be applied in different resource settings around the globe.

A low-intensity, low-cost model for youth mental health: the headspace Denmark approach

In the first phase of the project, Orygen has produced the report: ​

Young people in Denmark are benefitting from an accessible, low-intensity model of mental health support known as the headspace Denmark model.  The report details how this early intervention approach could be adapted to provide care to young people in other countries and contexts.

Community-based youth mental health services delivered by lay counsellors: guidance for implementation

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Orygen has developed a multi-purpose resource to support implementers considering the development of low-intensity service models in their context:

​The resource provides:

  • a roadmap for establishing a community-based youth mental health service delivered by lay counsellors,
  • a quick reference guide for organisations exploring this model of care as an option in a new context; and
  • a summary of key activities to evaluate an organisation’s current capacity to implement such a service.

Read the report