A computational decision-support approach for personalised care in youth mental health: A pilot feasibility study protocol

Introduction: Youth mental health presentations are largely heterogenous, making it difficult to match individuals to the most appropriate interventions. Personalised, measurement-based care has the potential to improve clinical decision-making and support shared decision-making, but remains challenging to implement in routine practice. Advances in digital monitoring and causal modelling offer new opportunities to identify individual-level processes driving mental health difficulties and to generate personalised decision-support. This pilot study aims to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the Minding Your Mind computational decision-support approach, a newly developed approach integrating routine outcome monitoring, individual-level causal modelling, and personalised feedback to support shared decision-making between young people and their clinicians. Methods and analysis: The study involves two phases. Phase 1 will recruit young people aged 15-25 years and mental health clinicians to participate in workshops to co-design the decision-support approach and its implementation into routine practice. Phase 2 is a prospective, single-arm feasibility study involving young people receiving mental health care and their treating clinicians. Primary outcomes include feasibility, acceptability, appropriateness, and usability of the decision-support approach, assessed via self-report and objective process indicators. Secondary outcomes include changes in use and experiences with shared decision-making, and clinical and functional outcomes. Quantitative analyses will be primarily descriptive, with exploratory pre-post comparisons and sensitivity analyses. Qualitative interviews will explore user experiences and implementation barriers and facilitators. Ethics and dissemination: This study has been approved by the Sydney Local Health District (RPAH Zone) Human Research Ethics Committee (X25-0341). All participants will provide informed consent prior to participation. Findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and accessible summaries co-developed with young people with lived experience.