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

Appendix F
three SEIFA quintiles. A slightly declining trajectory of improvement by SEIFA is also apparent among
females who show a reliable but not clinical improvement in psychological distress over the course of
their headspace treatment. Rates of decline are relatively small and show a flatter trajectory across
SEIFA groups.
The socio-economic pattern for males – although slight – appears to follow a U-shaped trajectory
(Figure F6). Around 23.7% of young men in the first SEIFA quintile show a clinical or reliable
improvement in psychological distress. This rate falls to 20.8% for males in the third SEIFA quintile,
and rises to 23.0% for the highest (fifth) SEIFA quintile. A greater proportion of young people in
higher SEIFA groups exhibit small (insignificant) improvements in K10.
Figure F5 Changes in K10 score between first and last headspace treatment: FEMALE clients, by
SEIFA
Source: Authors’ calculations from hCSA data
Figure F6 Changes in K10 score between first and last headspace treatment: MALE clients, by SEIFA
Source: Authors’ calculations from hCSA data.
Remoteness
The evaluation also looked at rates of improvement in mental health functioning for headspace
clients according to geographical remoteness, using the ARIA (Accessibility/Remoteness Index of
Australia) classification. Headspace clients were grouped into four categories of remoteness – major
cities, inner regional, outer regional and remote/very remote – to examine the extent of geographical
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