Department of Psychiatry, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Early Interv Psychiatry. 2022 Aug;16(8):920-925. doi: 10.1111/eip.13261. Epub 2021 Dec 11.
Hong Kong's existing mental health services are inadequate in addressing young people's needs. The LevelMind@JC project established an early intervention platform of community-based youth-specific mental health centres involving youth workers, cross-disciplinary professionals, and young people. The project intends to (1) pilot a community platform that incorporates a youth-friendly early screening tool with preventative intervention capabilities, (2) set up a state-of-the-art training system for youth mental health workers, (3) establish a community clinical support team and (4) develop a timely evaluation system to monitor the service and evaluate its outcome and cost-effectiveness against generic youth services.
Six hundred LevelMind@JC service users will be assessed alongside 600 young people visiting generic youth centres and 100 young people in the community. Participants will be matched according to age, gender, years of education, socioeconomic status, and level of distress. Assessments, administered at baseline and at 3, 6 and 12 months, will cover demographic characteristics, psychological distress, quality of life, depressive and anxiety symptoms, functioning, physical health and lifestyle, personality and social measures, cognitive measures and health economics. Mixed-model ANOVAs will be used to indicate interactions between services and between time points.
Built upon a community-based support model, LevelMind@JC aims to promote positive mental health in young people through the collaboration of cross-disciplinary mental health professionals. If efficacy and cost-effectiveness are established, the project could be scaled up, implicating a wider reach of care. We anticipate its success to be critical in combatting mental health issues stemming from both personal and population-level stressors.
香港现有的心理健康服务在满足年轻人的需求方面存在不足。LevelMind@JC 项目建立了一个以社区为基础的青年特定心理健康中心的早期干预平台，涉及青年工作者、跨学科专业人员和年轻人。该项目旨在：(1) 试点一个包含青年友好型早期筛查工具和预防干预功能的社区平台；(2) 为青年心理健康工作者建立一个最先进的培训系统；(3) 建立一个社区临床支持团队；(4) 开发一个及时的评估系统，以监测服务，并评估其对一般青年服务的效果和成本效益。
将对 600 名 LevelMind@JC 服务使用者进行评估，同时对 600 名访问普通青年中心的年轻人和 100 名社区中的年轻人进行评估。参与者将根据年龄、性别、受教育年限、社会经济地位和困扰程度进行匹配。评估将在基线和 3、6 和 12 个月时进行，涵盖人口统计学特征、心理困扰、生活质量、抑郁和焦虑症状、功能、身体健康和生活方式、人格和社会措施、认知措施和健康经济学。混合模型方差分析将用于指示服务之间和时间点之间的相互作用。
LevelMind@JC 项目建立在以社区为基础的支持模式之上，旨在通过跨学科心理健康专业人员的合作，促进年轻人的积极心理健康。如果有效性和成本效益得到确立，该项目可以扩大规模，扩大服务范围。我们预计其成功对于应对个人和人口层面压力源引起的心理健康问题至关重要。
