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

Appendix F
Occasion of service intervals at headspace centres
Figure F9 illustrates the proportion of headspace clients who show a clinically (CS) or reliably (RS)
significant improvement in K10 for different occasions of service (OoS) intervals. The analysis
differentiates the rates of clinical or reliable improvement both by age and gender, and by a series of
OoS intervals – specifically comparing K10 between the first and third OoS, the first and sixth OoS,
the first and tenth OoS, and finally between the first and last OoS in a single episode of treatment.
Female headspace clients enter into a program of treatments with typically a higher presenting K10
score than for males, and often remain within the system for a longer period of time. Females show
a higher level of clinically and reliably significant improvement as they get older. For example, the
proportion of young women aged 14 and under who clinically improve in K10 terms is around 8% by
the third visit relative to entry, rising to 12.6% by the tenth visit (see Figure F9). For young women
aged 23 and over, the rate of clinical K10 improvement rises from 10% at the third visit to nearly 18%
by the tenth. Combining rates of clinical and reliable improvements (Figure F9), the percentage of
females aged 23 and over rises from 16% by the third visit to nearly 29% at the tenth.
Around 12% of young men aged 14 and under show a clinical improvement by the third visit, with
this figure rising to 22% by the tenth visit (Figure F9). When clinical and reliable improvements
are combined together for young men (Figure F9), we see around a quarter to have improved
significantly in terms of psychological distress.
Figure F9 Proportion of headspace clients showing clinically (CS) or reliably (RS) significant change
in K10, by age and occasion of service (OoS) interval
i. Females, CS change ii. Males, CS change
iii. Females, CS or RS change
iv. Males, CS or RS change
Notes: Calculations exclude those who are observed to engage with headspace for only a single OoS. Furthermore, the
K10 change for each OoS interval is generated only for those clients where there is an observed K10 at both OoS in the
difference (for example, the average difference in K10 between OoS1 and OoS6 is calculated only for those headspace
clients who have their K10 recorded on both the first and sixth visits.
Source: Authors’ calculations from hCSA data.
The trajectory of clinically and reliably significant improvements in K10 by age is relatively flat for
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