Youth Participation in Early Psychosis

Youth participation is a fundamental right of young people within youth mental health services, as it embeds young people in the decision-making processes of service development and delivery.

Providing opportunities for young people to use their experience and skills to actively participate in mental health service design, improvement and delivery has significant benefits for providers and young people. It also helps to improve youth- centeredness and youth – friendliness of services and reduce stigma. In addition youth participation through a peer support program allows young people and their families/friends to benefit from the support of peers who have been through a first episode of psychosis.

This manual draws on the experiences of young people and their contribution has been central to the development of the innovative and successful approach to youth participation and engagement in the EPPIC program at Orygen Youth Health Clinical Program. The manual has five sections. ‘Youth participation in an early psychosis service’ provides a background and rationale for youth participation in mental health services. ‘Establishing a youth participation program’ outlines the service culture for successful youth participation in an early psychosis service, provides details on the different youth participation activities and outlines the role of the youth participation coordinator. The section entitled ‘Peer support in early psychosis’ provides a rationale behind peer support work and focuses on how to provide peer support work in an early psychosis service. While the ‘Evaluation and future research’ section highlights the importance of evaluating youth participation within a service.

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