E-Detection Tool for Emerging Mental Disorders

Psychosis is a severe mental disorder that involves abnormal experiences and altered behaviour. Although the onset of psychosis occurs in young people, most cases will only be identified later in the course of illness. The delayed detection is the main cause of significant negative long-term outcomes. The current proposal will develop an innovative E-mental health detection tool to effectively improve the identification of young people with emerging psychosis. This tool will be implemented on digital platforms including websites, tablets and mobile phones. Young people will be asked to complete an online questionnaire and two short online-exercises and will then be invited for face-to-face assessments to further confirm whether they are experiencing an emerging psychosis. This digital approach leverages previous expertise by the research team and it is expected to provide novel avenues to enable the identification of young people with emerging psychosis.