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

4. Outcomes of headspace Clients
Figure 4.5 Average K10 score by visit number and total number of occasions of service
Note: headspace clients have been divided into mutually exclusive categories based upon how many occasions of service
they received from headspace. The data is right censored and some headspace clients may have had further treatment
than what has been able to be observed within the data. headspace clients are not requested to record their K10 score
at each occasion of service. This information is generally asked at the initial, 3 rd , 6 th , 10 th and 15 th visits; however,
some clients record this information at other intervals. Further, not all clients provided information about their level of
psychological distress when asked. Smaller numbers of clients are observed as the number of occasions of service
increases. Cell sizes for these data can be found in Appendix F.
Source: Authors’ calculations from hCSA data.
The group who had 15 or more occasions of service had declining levels of psychological distress;
however, this was smaller and more gradual than groups who had fewer occasions of service. This
is not unexpected given they recorded the highest K10 scores on initial presentation. Further, the
number of occasions of service suggests that these young people were dealing with more acute
issues.
Figure 4.6 below illustrates the proportion of headspace clients by age and gender 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.
As reported earlier, female clients typically enter headspace with a higher presenting K10 score than
males, and females often access treatment for a longer period of time. Females also show a higher
level of clinically and reliably significant improvement with age. For example, the proportion of young
women aged 14 and under who clinically improve is around 8% by the third visit, rising to 12.6% by
the tenth visit (see Figure 4.6). For young women aged 23 and over, the rate of clinical improvement
rises from 10% at the third visit to nearly 18% by the tenth. Combining rates of clinical and reliable
improvements, the percentage of females aged 23 and over rises from 16% by the third visit to nearly
29% at the tenth.
In contrast, the trajectory of clinically and reliably significant improvements in K10 by age is relatively
flat for males, but generally shows a steeper rate of clinical improvement in mental health functioning
as the number of headspace visits rises. This is especially the case for the youngest cohort of
males who received headspace treatment. Around 12% of males aged 14 and under show a clinical
improvement by the third visit, with this figure rising to 22% by the tenth visit (Figure 4.6). When
clinical and reliable improvements are combined for young men, around one in four males improve
significantly.
Social Policy Research Centre 2015
headspace Evaluation Final Report
48