Engaging Young People in the Development of Digital Mental Health Innovation in Africa

全球四分之一的人面临精神卫生挑战，但在低收入和中等收入国家，高达80%的人没有得到预防性或急性护理。数字精神卫生被视为解决治疗差距的一条有希望的途径，但也带来了伦理、法律和政策方面的挑战。在中低收入国家，缺乏道德、治理和政策指导可能会减缓或阻止数字精神卫生创新向卫生保健系统的转化。这影响了个人获得数字创新带来的精神卫生技术的权利。缺乏对道德和治理挑战的关注的另一个后果是，数字心理健康的危害和益处之间的平衡没有得到适当的确定和分析。缺乏分析可能会对年轻人造成不成比例的影响，他们是心理健康干预的主要目标，而且他们也具有独特的个人和社会脆弱性。为了解决这一问题，该网络将把非洲各地数字精神卫生伦理方面的利益攸关方和专家、数字创新者、精神卫生从业人员和政策制定者聚集在一起。主要目标是为非洲国家的年轻人制定一个负责任和相关的数字心理健康干预措施的强有力框架。这个跨学科网络将以一群年轻人为核心，他们将共同创造所有的工作和产出。该网络将利用利益相关者测绘调查、讲习班以及跨学科培训和交流来实现其目标。它不仅将促进学术研究，还将促进研究能力、合作生产、部门间流动以及年轻人的民主参与。项目活动将包括：-为早期职业研究人员和青年提供强化培训和能力建设机会（例如讲习班；访问学者方案）；-举行会议和工作坊，促进持份者之间的知识转移；-文献综述，批判性地评估和综合现有工作，找出差距，并制定研究问题-社区参与，为实证问题提供信息-与年轻人一起，共同制定可持续参与战略，让年轻人参与，重点关注弱势群体，如LGBTQ+的代表；性暴力幸存者；艾滋病毒/艾滋病感染者和青年人将成为网络的核心，与伦理和社会科学研究人员专家组结合在一起；服务提供商（应用程序开发者、心理健康从业者和研究人员）；宗教集会、政策和治理。这将确保网络产出反映年轻人的需求，并确保框架是与年轻人、研究人员、服务提供者和决策者共同制作的，具有可扩展性和可持续性。1. Patel， V., Saxena， S., Lund， C., Thornicroft， G., Baingana， F., Bolton， P.等（2018）。《柳叶刀》全球心理健康和可持续发展委员会。《柳叶刀》，392(10157),1553-1598。

Mental health challenges are faced by 1 in 4 people globally, but in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC), up to 80% of people do not receive preventive or acute care . Digital mental health is seen as a promising route to address the treatment gap, but also raises ethical, legal and policy challenges. In LMICs, lack of ethics, governance and policy guidance can slow down or prevent translation of digital mental health innovations into the healthcare system. This impinges on the rights of individuals to access mental health technologies that arise from digital innovations. A further consequence of the lack of attention to ethics and governance challenges is that the balance of harms and benefits of digital mental health have not been properly identified and analysed. The lack of analysis is likely to disproportionately affect young people, who are a key target for mental health interventions, and who also have distinctive individual and social vulnerabilities. To address this problem, the network will bring together stakeholders and experts in the ethics of digital mental health, digital innovators, mental health practitioners, and policy makers across Africa. The chief aim is to develop a robust framework for responsible and relevant digital mental health interventions for young people in African countries. The cross-disciplinary network will have a group of young people at its core, who will co-create all its work and outputs. The network will use a stakeholder mapping surveys, workshops and interdisciplinary training and exchanges to achieve its aims. It will contribute not only to scholarship, but also to research capacity, co-production, inter-sector mobility, and democratic participation among young people. Project activities will include:-Intensive training and capacity-building opportunities for early career researchers and young people (e.g. workshops; visiting scholar programmes);-Meetings and workshops to facilitate the transfer of knowledge among stakeholders;-Literature reviews to critically assess and synthesise existing work, identify gaps, and formulate research questions-Community engagement to inform empirical questions-With young people, co-create a sustainable engagement strategy to involve young people, with a focus on representation from vulnerable groups, such as LGBTQ+; sexual violence survivors; those living with HIV/AIDSYoung people will be at the core of the Network, integrated with expert groups of researchers in ethics and social sciences; service providers (app developers, mental health practitioners and researchers); religious congregations, policy and governance. This will ensure the network outputs reflect the needs of young people and that the framework is scalable and sustainable as it is co-produced with young people, researchers, service providers, and policy makers. 1. Patel, V., Saxena, S., Lund, C., Thornicroft, G., Baingana, F., Bolton, P., et al. (2018). The Lancet Commission on global mental health and sustainable development. The Lancet, 392(10157), 1553-1598.