Supporting the mental wellbeing of justice-involved young people in the commmunity

Justice-involved young people experience much poorer mental health outcomes compared to their non-justice-involved peers. This includes higher rates of distress, mental illness, self-harm, and suicide.  

Despite this, they often experience barriers to getting the mental wellbeing support they need from primary care doctors, psychologists, and other specialist mental health services. This contributes to their high rates of emergency department and hospital contact for mental health conditions.  

This study aims to understand how other health and social support services that more regularly engage with justice-involved young people (<24 years old) can directly or indirectly support their mental wellbeing. We are engaging with a wide variety of service providers in 45-60 minute, semi-structured interviews, in person and online. This includes (but is not limited to) housing or homelessness services, transitional support programs, general youth services, prison in-reach programs, welfare or family support programs, alcohol or other drug programs, mental health programs, private medical clinics, street doctors, and Aboriginal community-controlled organisations in the Perth Metro area.

How can I get involved?

We are currently recruiting interview participants for this project.
If you are interested in learning more, please contact Lindsay Pearce.

Funding: Interdisciplinary Seed Funding, School of Population Health, Curtin University

Project team: Lindsay Pearce, Sarah Pellicano, Rebecca Shuttleworth, Dr Gemma Crawford, Dr Roanna Lobo, Dr Matthew Legge, Dr James Smith, Louise Southalan, Prof David Lawrence, Prof Stuart Kinner