Is headspace making a difference to young people’s lives?

7. Conclusion
treatment); however, classifying the magnitude of the strength of an effect size is often contentious,
especially for a diverse group of people accessing a wide range of different services.
Other outcome indicators, including social inclusion and drug and alcohol use, show weaker results.
While the ‘headspace treatment’ group shows an overall improvement in social inclusion over time,
this improvement is not as strong as that observed for the matched ‘other’ and ‘no treatment’ groups.
Further, while no significant change was observed in binge drinking in the ‘headspace treatment’
group, a reduction in binge drinking was observed in the matched ‘no treatment’ group from 1.5 day
to just under one day on average each month. The difference-in-differences observed over time
are significant at the 1% level, with the matched ‘no treatment’ group reporting a reduction in binge
drinking by 0.7 days more than the ‘headspace treatment’ group, and the ‘other treatment’ group
reporting a reduction in binge drinking by 0.75 days more than the ‘headspace treatment’ group. No
statistically significant differences were observed for cannabis use. These results must be interpreted
with caution as these outcome indicators were not included as benchmarks in the matching
technique and clear differences are seen at baseline between the groups, particularly for the social
inclusion outcome.
Results that seek to extend this analysis by testing the prevalence of a clinically significant change
show that overall, substantially more young people using headspace services get significantly better
(22.7%) than get worse (9.4%) when measured against ‘functional’ benchmarks of psychological
distress derived from the general youth population. Further, particularly strong effects arising from
the improvements in mental health delivered through headspace include a significantly reduced
prevalence of suicidal ideation and self-harm.
One of the more important findings in this evaluation is the improvement that can be seen in other
valuable outcomes (most notably a reduction in suicidal ideation and self-harm) for those receiving
headspace treatments, even among those for whom the K10 measure of psychological distress
shows little change. The outcomes analysis also highlighted gains for clients related to enhanced
social inclusion and economic participation. Economic and social benefits from improved mental
health functioning are delivered through a number of positive outcomes, and to the extent that these
can be attributed to headspace treatment, add value to the headspace investment. The strongest
economic benefits arise from a significant reduction in the number of days lost due to illness,
the number of days cut down, and the reduction in suicide ideation and self-harm. It should be
recognised that employment may be a longer term outcome than possible to fully judge from this
evaluation. Nevertheless, these findings provide some indication of the economic and social value to
society of the improvements in mental health functioning being delivered through headspace.
Caution should be taken when interpreting the outcome findings. Young people interviewed attributed
improvements across a number of outcome areas to headspace while the statistical data shows
a small program effect. Given the timing of the fieldwork, it was not possible to explore statistical
analysis results with young people and headspace staff.
The headspace service delivery model
headspace is a holistic program that operates on a national, community and individual level. The
value of national branding and mental health promotion work as well as local community awareness
initiatives in educating young people about the services available to them, encouraging help seeking,
and reducing the stigma of mental health problems are highlighted by the Centre Managers Survey,
the Professional Stakeholders Survey and interview data.
The headspace service delivery model is designed to enable young people to receive multiple
services from different practitioner disciplines within one location. This minimises the need for
referral to other services, which may explain the very low rate of formal referrals to other services
for headspace clients. Evaluation data suggests that the majority of referrals that connect young
people to other services within the system are informal or verbal. These are not recorded in the
administrative data, but staff at all fieldwork sites spoke of referring frequently. It was clear that some
centres are working effectively with other local service providers while tensions and challenges
are evident in other centres. Centres that have developed good links with local GPs and CAMHS
in particular should work with other sites to lead positive change and share successful methods of
communication and cooperation. Overall, this evaluation confirms, however, that the service context
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