Studies have shown that mental health difficulties among young people are increasing. 1 in 7 secondary school pupils suffer from a mental health disorder but most these young people are not identified. Schools are a good place to spot young people who are struggling and for making sure they get the help they need.
The Artemis-A platform was developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge.
The team behind Artemis-A comprise of experts from the fields of psychiatry, psychology, psychometrics, statistics, neuroscience, health, at the forefront of research in young people’s mental health.
Artemis-A is a quick and reliable mental health check-up for schools to use. The young person only needs to answer 3 to 5 questions accessed via a weblink. It can be completed at school or at home in their own time.
Sensitive data is held on secure, fully-GDPR compliant servers. Access to the data is strictly controlled based your data protection policies. If a student is flagged as high risk, a designated staff member will be able to contact the student and arrange support.
Detecting mental health difficulties usually involves completing lots of lengthy questionnaires, which then need to be scored and interpreted by a trained person. This is time consuming and costly for busy schools to manage.
Artemis-A uses Computerised Adaptive Testing (CAT) technology which selects questions from a large group of questions based on a user's response. The responses are scored automatically in real time to measure emotional distress. Using CAT means that the assessment typically takes just a minute to complete.
The development of Artemis-A has been a team effort. It was co-produced with school staff, mental health professionals, parents and most importantly, young people. They were involved at each stage of the design and development process to make sure the platfrom is useful and user friendly. We have also worked closely with design experts, Effusion and The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge.
Our research is ongoing and next we will evaluate how acceptable and practical secondary schools find using ARTEMIS-A. Following this, we hope to introduce ARTEMIS-A to secondary schools across the UK, and then to healthcare and juvenile justice systems.
Discover our latest research and publications:
If your school wants to get involved in this work, please contact us.
