Is headspace making a difference to young people’s lives?

Appendix F
Supplementary analyses for Chapter 4: Outcomes of headspace Clients
This appendix includes analysis undertaken to examine the outcomes of headspace clients, that has
been excluded from Chapter 4 above.
Indigenous status
The evaluation team compared changes in K10 scores between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
headspace clients over the course of their engagement with headspace. Calculations are based on
the change in K10 between the first and last visit to headspace, separately for females (Figure F1)
and males (Figure F2) 45 .
As reported in Figure F1, the rates of clinical improvement for Indigenous and non-Indigenous
females are very similar at 13.6% and 13.5% respectively. Combining with the percentage of those
who improve reliably (RS improve) but not clinically, we see significant improvement in K10 of 24.1%
for Indigenous young women and 23% for non-Indigenous young women. It should be noted that the
rate of statistically significant decline in K10 is somewhat higher for Indigenous females, at 13.4%,
compared with 10% for the non-Indigenous group. Indeed, this combined rate is higher than for any
other group comparison in our evaluation analysis.
Around 12.3% of Indigenous males improve clinically over the course of their time with headspace
– a rate around 1.6 percentage points lower than for non-Indigenous males (Figure F2). The rates
of significant decline are similar between the two groups, at 8.4% and 8.0% respectively. Similarities
between rates of change for Indigenous and non-Indigenous males could reflect the development of
tailored programs in headspace centres with a relatively high Indigenous client base.
45
There is some debate on the use of K10 as a measure of mental health functioning among Indigenous peoples,
especially around the degree to which the component indicators for K10 are appropriate for Indigenous individuals,
families and communities. The alternative K5 measure rewords and excludes certain questions regarding feelings
of worthlessness, and has been proposed as a more culturally appropriate measure of psychological distress for
Indigenous populations (Jorm, Bourchier, Cvetkovskiand Stewart, 2012). The evaluation team recognises the issue, but
this analysis retains K10 as a psychological distress measure for the purpose of comparability of indicators.
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