Orygen Digital

Overview

At Orygen Digital we believe that all young people and families have the right to effective mental health care, without limits. Improving young people’s mental health and wellbeing, and increasing access to mental health services, is at the heart of our mission.

Exploring technology’s role in meeting that mission is the responsibility of Orygen Digital. Our work with existing and emerging technologies – from digital apps through to extended reality – is transforming the delivery of youth mental health care.

We have two digital mental health products - MOST and Mello - that have gone from research to real life support for young people experiencing mental ill health. More solutions are in development thanks to our program of research, supported by our dedicated Extended Reality (XR) Innovation Lab.

We are driven by:

Youth and family-led innovation: we work alongside young people and their families to design and deliver technology-based mental health care that is lovable and evidence-based.
Multi-disciplinary collaboration: our in-house innovation team blends diverse talent from 15 different disciplines across creative, computational, clinical and research domains to arrive at novel digital solutions to old problems in youth mental health care.
Digitally-enhanced clinical services: we partner closely with traditional clinical services to fully embed our effective and innovative technologies, enhancing but never replacing existing service delivery and addressing the major limitations of current care.

Orygen Digital is led by Professor Mario Alvarez-Jimenez.

Digital solutions: meet MOST

Orygen Digital's flagship digital mental health service MOST is the first single digital solution specifically designed to integrate with, and address, the key limitations of current youth mental health services.

MOST has been designed with and for young people and existing services , providing clinicians with evidence-based tools that can be used across the diagnostic and severity spectrums and all stages of treatment.

Since launching in Victoria in mid-2020, MOST is now available for free through participating youth mental health services in Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Young people in Western Australia will get access to MOST in April 2024. MOST is supported by the Victorian Government, the NSW Government, the ACT Government, the Queensland Government, the Telstra Foundation and the Children's Hospital Foundation.

The suite of tools provided by MOST includes:

Personalised therapy programs: these programs are tailored to each young person’s unique needs and preferences by automated processes and specialist clinicians.
Targeted coping support: a diverse digital toolkit of coping supports designed to carry young people through difficult moments, while building their skills and confidence for future resilience.
Tailored human support: including vocational specialists, peer workers and clinicians.
Social connection: a safe, virtual support network of young people with a shared experience of mental ill-health, carefully moderated to foster meaningful social connection and combat isolation and self-stigma.
Real-time mental health tracking: including progress towards goals and monitoring of risk.

Learn more about MOST

Digital solutions: Meet Mello

Mello is a free mental health app helping young minds break free from negative thinking loops.

Designed with and for young people aged 16-25, Mello offers effective, evidence-based tools that target worry and rumination, also known as ‘stuck thinking’. Stuck thinking is an underlying cause of anxiety, depression and many other mental health conditions.

Mello combines real psychological treatments like CBT, ACT, MCT, MBCT and DBT to provide effective relief from stuck thinking when they’re experiencing it. It also helps them build long term skills to proactively manage their mental health in the future.

In clinical trials, Mello was shown to help 8 in 10 young people reduce anxiety and depression.

Mello is 100% free for young people thanks to philanthropic funders like the Telstra Foundation and William Buckland Foundation.

It’s available to download from the Apple App and Google Play stores.

Learn more about Mello

Download this information sheet for more information.

Want to know more about Orygen Digital's strategic direction? Watch a video from Orygen Digital General Manager Jon Myer below.