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STUDY PROTOCOL article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1491756
Study protocol: for An effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and process evaluation of headspace Denmark
Provisionally accepted
Siv B.B. Bjørkedal 1*
Thomas N. Christensen 1
Rie M. Poulsen 1,2
Anne Ranning 1,3
Anne Amalie Elgaard Thorup 4,5 Merete Nordentoft 1,5
Andersen B. Bojesen 1
Lene Halling Hastrup 6,7
Marte Ustrup 1
Lene Falgaard Eplov 1- 1 Copenhagen Research Unit for Recovery Mental Health Center Amager, Copenhagen S, Denmark
- 2 National Board of Social Services in Denmark, Odense, Denmark
- 3 Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen,, Copenhagen, Denmark
- 4 Child and Adolescent Mental Health Center, Research Unit, Hellerup, Denmark
- 5 Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health Science, Copenhagen, Denmark
- 6 Psychiatric Research Unit, Psychiatry Region Zealand, Slagelse, Denmark
- 7 Danish Centre for Health Economics (DaCHE), University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
Introduction: Since 2013, headspace Denmark has been offered in specific areas to adolescents and young adults between 12 and 25 years, to promote youth mental health and wellbeing. headspace provides free counselling and support, primarily delivered by trained volunteers in the headspace centres and provides information and knowledge about youth mental health, and headspace services, through community engagement. Until now, effectiveness evaluation of the Danish headspace centres has not been conducted.Methods: Present study consists of; 1) an effectiveness evaluation designed as a propensity score matched quasi-experimental trial, where the exposed person (n=1500), in this case the young person receiving counselling sessions at headspace, will be matched by using propensity scores to six five unexposed individuals. 2) a cost-effectiveness evaluation 3) a process evaluation with predominantly qualitative methods to investigate the implementation of key activities of headspace, their mechanisms of change, and interactions with contextual factors.Discussion: headspace centres have achieved national endorsement and are implemented in 30 municipalities in Denmark. Thus, there is a need to investigate the effectiveness of the services. Results from the evaluation can also contribute to new knowledge targeted at international youth mental health promotion initiatives. However, this evaluation is limited by selection bias since it is not possible to separate the impact of the intervention from the impact of help-seeking behaviour.
Keywords: Youth mental health, volunteerism, complex intervention, Civic society, Anti-stigma
Received: 23 Sep 2024; Accepted: 19 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bjørkedal, Christensen, Poulsen, Ranning, Thorup, Nordentoft, Bojesen, Hastrup, Ustrup and Eplov. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Siv B.B. Bjørkedal, Copenhagen Research Unit for Recovery Mental Health Center Amager, Copenhagen S, Denmark
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