Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Health Soc Care Community. 2012 Mar;20(2):181-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2524.2011.01029.x. Epub 2011 Sep 19.
Young people experience high rates of mental health problems, but very few access professional mental health support. To address the barriers young people face in accessing mental health services, there is growing recognition of the importance of ensuring services are youth-friendly. Indeed, almost a decade ago, the World Health Organisation developed a youth-friendly framework for services to apply. Yet, this framework has rarely been evaluated against health initiatives for young people. This article begins to address this gap. Using 168 semi-structured, qualitative interviews with young service users, this paper explores the extent to which the Australian National Youth Mental Health Foundation, also called headspace, applied the WHO's youth-friendly framework which emphasises accessibility, acceptability and appropriateness (AAA). It argues that headspace was largely successful in implementing an AAA youth-friendly service and provides evidence of the importance of tailoring services to ensure they are accessible, acceptable and appropriate for young people. However, it also raises questions about what youth-friendly service provision means for different young people at different times. The findings suggest that youth friendliness should be applied across different stages of interaction (at initial engagement and in the ongoing relationship between patient and clinician) and at different levels (the environment the care is provided in, within policies and procedures and within and between relationships from receptionists to clinicians).
年轻人经历着较高的心理健康问题发生率，但只有极少数人会寻求专业的心理健康支持。为了解决年轻人在获取心理健康服务方面面临的障碍，人们越来越认识到确保服务对年轻人友好的重要性。事实上，近十年前，世界卫生组织为服务机构制定了一个青年友好框架。然而，该框架很少针对年轻人的健康倡议进行评估。本文开始解决这一差距。本文使用了 168 次与年轻服务使用者的半结构化定性访谈，探讨了澳大利亚国家青年心理健康基金会（又称 headspace）在多大程度上应用了世界卫生组织强调可及性、可接受性和适宜性（AAA）的青年友好框架。它认为，headspace 在实施 AAA 青年友好服务方面基本上是成功的，并提供了证据表明，为确保服务对年轻人具有可及性、可接受性和适宜性，需要对服务进行调整。然而，它也提出了一些问题，即青年友好服务的提供对不同时期的不同年轻人意味着什么。研究结果表明，青年友好性应该应用于不同的互动阶段（在最初的接触和医患之间的持续关系中）和不同的层面（提供护理的环境、政策和程序内部以及接待员到临床医生之间的关系内部和之间）。
