Intensive Outreach for Mental Health: Young People’s Experiences of an Intensive Outreach Model on Recovery and Engagement

• DOI: 10.1007/s10597-024-01387-z
• Publication Date: 2025-01-06T17:45:33Z
• Authors: India Bellairs-Walsh; Maria Nichterlein; Ben Assan; Robyn Stargatt

Abstract Engagement with traditional mental health services can be particularly challenging for young people experiencing severe and complex mental health problems. Assertive community treatment-based services providing mobile outreach, such as Intensive Mobile Youth Outreach Services (IMYOS), operate across Australia to support these young people’s mental health needs in the transition to adulthood. Past research on IMYOS has focused on quantitative outcome measures, and young people’s experiences of this type of model are poorly understood. This study explored youth service users’ experiences of an IMYOS program, focusing on the model and intervention aspects perceived as barriers and facilitators to their overall recovery and service engagement. Semi-structured, in-depth interviewing was undertaken with nine young people aged 16–19 years (M = 17.61 years) who were current or recent service users of an IMYOS program in Melbourne, Australia. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Having a therapeutic space, clinicians’ specialised expertise, use of an outreach and community-oriented approach, and care continuity and availability across settings were program aspects identified by young people as facilitating their recovery and service engagement. Program aspects perceived as barriers to recovery and engagement were clinical unsuitability and ineffectiveness of the program and interventions, and conflicts between personal autonomy and assertive care. Young people’s perceptions of clinical suitability and therapeutic relevance influenced their evaluations of the overall effectiveness of the IMYOS service, which subsequently impacted their engagement. The findings provide opportunities for IMYOS clinicians to enhance young people’s recovery and engagement outcomes and have implications for the improvement of this innovative service for at-risk young people.