Mental health is a state of wellbeing where every individual realises their potential, the ability to cope with the stress of life and can work productively (Who, 2016). In Australia headspace is the National Youth Mental Health Foundation designed to provide early intervention providing early intervention mental health services to 12-25 year olds (Headspace, 2016). This has prompted Professor Anthony Jorm to write for The Conversation, Is headspace really improving young people mental health? This raises the question of the effectiveness of Australia’s primary youth mental health program and if there should be a major expansion of 100 clinics with no research into such a question, initiating thoughts from the Australian government in charge
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With these uses for headspace Jorm continues as to show that an internal study of the youth population that uses headspace, presented 36% of clients had significant improvement of their symptoms, 51% had no change and 13% actually got significantly worse. Jorms continues to state that even if the statistics load positive there is no way if it is due to the treatment given or as just a natural progression. As shown in a paper by Rutherford et al, there is a level of effect that placebo can be placed in relation to treatments such as medication and psychological treatment and which may lead to the interpretation of the data to be slightly biased due to the no collation of remission data (Rutherford et al., 2012). This in conjunction that the fact that people can also have a progression or worsening of the mental health problems naturally which then in turn have nothing to do with the services provided by headspace …show more content…
Jorm uses a connection to the academic world to accurately and thoroughly the only weakness of the argument is there is no external studies to back Jorm’s claims of a system that is falling behind by international standards. Rickwood et al states that headspace is reaching the targeted demographics regardless of Jorms claims (Rickwood et al., 2014); however, Jorm is adamant Australia does need a mental health reform. The rest of Jorm’s article is supported by the research conducted by Rutherford et al and Rickwood et al until such time as more in depth external analysis of headspace is conducted to prove the overall effectiveness in treating Australia’s
With these uses for headspace Jorm continues as to show that an internal study of the youth population that uses headspace, presented 36% of clients had significant improvement of their symptoms, 51% had no change and 13% actually got significantly worse. Jorms continues to state that even if the statistics load positive there is no way if it is due to the treatment given or as just a natural progression. As shown in a paper by Rutherford et al, there is a level of effect that placebo can be placed in relation to treatments such as medication and psychological treatment and which may lead to the interpretation of the data to be slightly biased due to the no collation of remission data (Rutherford et al., 2012). This in conjunction that the fact that people can also have a progression or worsening of the mental health problems naturally which then in turn have nothing to do with the services provided by headspace …show more content…
Jorm uses a connection to the academic world to accurately and thoroughly the only weakness of the argument is there is no external studies to back Jorm’s claims of a system that is falling behind by international standards. Rickwood et al states that headspace is reaching the targeted demographics regardless of Jorms claims (Rickwood et al., 2014); however, Jorm is adamant Australia does need a mental health reform. The rest of Jorm’s article is supported by the research conducted by Rutherford et al and Rickwood et al until such time as more in depth external analysis of headspace is conducted to prove the overall effectiveness in treating Australia’s