Redesigning Psychiatry – Designing diagnostics for young people facing complex mental health challenges

Diagnostics play an important role in child and adolescent psychiatry, but current approaches are increasingly being questioned. Diagnoses based on DSM classifications are often strongly medical in nature and take limited account of the broader context in which problems arise. This can result in young people being confined to labels that offer little guidance for appropriate support.

This project explores how diagnostics for young people aged 12 to 18 can be redesigned. It builds on the concept of pattern-based diagnostics, in which the focus is not on classification but on the patterns in which someone has become stuck. These patterns may occur in behaviour, relationships, or environmental factors and often form reinforcing cycles. The project investigates how this approach, previously developed for adults, can be translated to the everyday reality of young people and their parents.

Young people, parents, practitioners, and people with lived experience collaborate in developing and testing new forms of diagnostics. Designers play a central role by using the Reframing method to question existing assumptions about diagnostics and to develop alternative perspectives. The project also examines how these new perspectives are adopted in practice and how they influence thinking and behaviour.

The results provide insight into how diagnostics can better reflect the complex nature of mental health challenges in young people. At the same time, the project contributes knowledge on the role of design in system change, particularly in understanding how new frames of thinking emerge and are applied in practice.

€95,340 will be used as a PPP program grant.