Increasing digital mental health reach and uptake via youth partnerships

Abstract

Youth in the United States are facing an unprecedented mental health crisis. Yet, brick-and-mortar mental healthcare, such as face-to-face therapy, is overwhelmingly inaccessible to youth despite research advances in youth mental health. Digital Mental Health tools (DMH), the use of technologies to deliver mental health assessments and interventions, may help to increase mental healthcare accessibility. However, for a variety of reasons, evidence-based DMH have not been successful in reaching youth in real-world settings, particularly those who are most encumbered with access barriers to mental healthcare. This Comment therefore focuses on increasing DMH reach and uptake by young people, particularly among minoritized youth, by engaging in community-based youth partnerships. This idea recognizes and grows from decades’ worth of community-based participatory research and youth partnerships successfully conducted by other disciplines (e.g., social work, public health, urban planning, education). Increasing uptake and engagement is an issue that is unlikely to be solved by adult-driven theory and design. As such, we emphasize the necessity of reframing youth input into DMH design and deployment from one-time participants to integral community-based partners. Indeed, recognizing and valuing their expertise to equitably address DMH implementation challenges, youth should help to pose the very questions that they will help to answer throughout the design and implementation planning for DMH moving forward.