Participatory design of an online therapy for youth mental health

Online therapy has the potential to extend existing face-to-face support for mental health, but designers face challenges such as lack of user engagement. Participatory design could improve outcomes but is difficult to pursue in the mental health context. By working with a research-focused clinic we have been able to employ participatory design methods over a period of three years to develop and test an online therapy for young people with psychosis. This paper discusses our methods and results in the light of existing design frameworks for youth mental health, and reports experiences which will be useful for other researchers in the field. We have found that participatory approaches are indeed challenging in the mental health context, but can result in technology that is efficacious and acceptable to young people.