Co-designing a nationwide digital mental health service for diverse communities

Abstract

The development of digital mental health innovations (DMHI) has the potential to extend care,expand existing interventions, improve client monitoring, and reduce social inequality through increased access (APC, 2020). DMHI also raise significant ethical challenges including privacy, data sharing, equitable access, cultural safety, stigmatisation, and discrimination of minority populations. Stakeholder engagement through user-led design is critical to minimise harms and meet the needs of a diverse community of end-users. We used a bioethics-by-design approach to examine the social,ethical, and practical impacts of the development of a nationwide online mental health service for young Australians to access mental health information, diagnosis, and treatment.