Towards Youth Mental Health System Reform: An Evaluation of Participatory Systems Modelling in the Australian Capital Territory

One of the goals of Phase I of the 'Right care, first time, where you live' is to create systems dynamics models that help support decision makers in regional communities to make evidence informed decision about the coordination and funding of services and programs within their region.

The dynamic systems models are developed using a participatory approach, which means that our Brain and Mind Centre team work with a site to gather people from the community to help us map out how the youth mental health system is working within that region.  There are a diverse range of stakeholders involved in this mapping and development process including young people with lived experience of poor mental health as well as representatives from the mental health system in the region such as clinicians, health services, carers, education services, and housing services to name a few.

The first region to go through the process was the ACT where a systems model was developed to provide regional leaders with a sophisticated forecasting and strategic decision-support tool to inform investments on how to achieve the greatest population outcomes for young people in the ACT.

Evaluating the effectiveness of the participatory systems model development process is a key component of the research process. It enables us to make improvements and refinements to that process based on what the site participants are telling us. Our evaluation process is extensive and involves asking participants, via gamified surveys and 1:1 interviews, about their experience before, during and after the dynamic systems model is built.

You can learn more about the process and our approach in this recently published paper on the participatory systems model development process for the ACT site: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/11/8/386