Becoming Good: early intervention and moral development in child psychiatry

Young people are increasingly targets of interventions in mental health, using predictive and preventive tools emerging from genetics, neuroscience, digital technology and big data. These innovations carry significant ethical challenges. We will develop a scalable digital solution to educate, engage and empower young people.

We will carry out an international consultation to identify young people’s needs, values and preferences regarding mental health innovations. We will develop a white paper for policy makers based on this consultation and using our relationships with WHO, UK POST, the UN and the UK government. As part of the project, we will develop a game prototype as a digital bioethics solution, working in partnership with young people at every stage. We will also form a global group of 40 young leaders from 15 countries to co-lead development and inform research direction and focus. We will collaborate with OxInnovation to evaluate the game’s potential in UK education and health contexts. 

We aim to educate, engage and empower young people in the context of ethics in mental health interventions and increase societal awareness of the importance of young people's voices in healthcare decision-making. We will also Illustrate the limits and potential of a digital bioethics tool.