Just like physical health, the foundations for good mental health are established in childhood and adolescence. Schools and digital programs can play a key role in building these foundations and preventing the onset of mental ill health.

The primary project for the fellowship was to co-design and evaluate a novel digital prevention program for adolescents to support their peers around the topics of mental health and substance use, titled ‘Mind your Mate’. This program was successfully developed in collaboration with young people, software developers and school staff, and overseen by an Expert Advisory Board. The final intervention consists of online classroom lessons and a smartphone app.

The app is now available to download on both the Apple iTunes and Google Play stores (for research purposes). The development process was published in a peer-reviewed journal and has gone on to inform the development of digital tools in other research studies from across the globe.

The evaluation study was run with 12 schools during the Covid-19 pandemic and found the prevention program reduced negative mental health symptoms (depression) among adolescents who received it, compared to the control group, over a 12-month period. Dr Louise Birrell and the research team are now expanding the classroom program to include four digital lessons, developed with a diverse group of young people, and plan to evaluate this expanded program.

During the fellowship, Dr Birrell was also involved in a number of other projects to develop and test new prevention resources for young people’s mental health and wellbeing:

• Co-led the development of NSW government-funded resources featured in the NSW Health campaign ‘Respect Your Brain’, with videos viewed more than 200,000 times: https://yourroom.health.nsw.gov.au/getting-help/Pages/Respect-Your-Brain.aspx
• Co-led a series of videos on youth participation in research and the social determinants of health. One of these videos features as part of a suite of resources for school students, sitting alongside ABC TV’s ‘Magda’s Big National Health Check’ (2022): https://www.abc.net.au/education/digibooks/magdas-big-national-health-check/101734328#8

Media contact: [email protected]       First published 8th September 2026

Graphic acknowledgement: Freepik.com