Preliminary findings from a scoping review on co-producing accessible digital mental health tools in partnership with marginalized young people

Despite evidence that digital mental health supports can improve young people's access to mental health care, guidance on the most appropriate co-production processes for engaging youth in designing and evaluating these technologies is lacking. User input is critical in digital mental health solutions, particularly for marginalised young people who are often excluded from co-production processes.
The aim was to explore the extant literature on co-production processes with marginalised youth in digital mental health supports, ranging from mental health promotion to targeted interventions to serve as the basis for our wider, youth-led project, including a qualitative exploration of digital mental health challenges facing young people across the island of Ireland; identifying, with young people, appropriate digital mental health apps and interventions; validating, in partnership with young people, what digital mental health interventions work; and using these findings to inform policy and practice recommendations for health providers across the island of Ireland and beyond.
The scoping review was guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s framework and PRISMA-ScR. The search spanned 12 databases, including studies from 2021 onwards, focused on co-production with young people aged 16-25 in different stages of designing and assessing digital mental health technologies, especially those who are marginalised. Twenty-two studies were identified as meeting the inclusion criteria. Preliminary findings suggest that young people are mainly involved in the initial design phase (n=8) or overall evaluations (n=5) of digital mental health supports and that studies use primarily qualitative (e.g. focus groups and interviews; n=10) or mixed methods (=7) rather than participatory design for co- production.
Implications of these findings will be discussed in light of feedback received from the wider project’s youth panel and service provider advisory board to showcase a) the multifaceted concept of co- production and b) how to best translate it into practice to achieve truly youth-led results.