Abstract
Background:
People from Sub-Saharan African and Caribbean backgrounds are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with psychotic disorders than other ethnic groups in the UK. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK recommends family therapy as a clinically effective treatment for the management of psychosis. NICE also recommends that family interventions should be culturally informed to meet the needs of an increasingly ethnically diverse population. However, people from minoritised backgrounds are rarely offered family therapy. The rise in digital mental health worldwide offers unique opportunities to support culturally informed approaches at scale and low cost.
Objective:
The overarching aim of CaFI:Digital was to help address inequalities in the provision of mental healthcare for people from Black African and Caribbean populations, by building a digital platform ‘CaFI:Digital’ to support delivery of a Culturally-Adapted Family Intervention (CaFI). The purpose of developing CaFI:Digital was to provide an accessible, user-friendly, and engaging website for service users, their families and therapists as an alternative or adjunct to in-person therapy.
Methods:
We used an iterative Agile co-design approach to develop a user-friendly and inclusive website. Co-design workshops (n = 2), semi-structured interviews (n = 2), and collaborative research team meetings (n = 3) were used to capture and prioritise end user feedback on the clinician and service-user-facing components of the platform. The software was developed using Agile sprints, with each sprint lasting 3-weeks, allowing feedback to be integrated rapidly and revised software prototypes to be shared with end users for review, revision, and approval.
Results:
Key software requirements were identified in the co-design activities and were implemented to maximise accessibility and usability of the website. Following the software development, we successfully beta-tested the software with our target end user population to ensure it was defect-free and ready for use with the target population.
Conclusions:
A digital platform to support delivery of Culturally-Adapted Family Intervention (CaFI) for psychosis was rapidly developed in a series of co-design activities. To our knowledge, this is the first bespoke digital therapy platform that has been co-designed with and for people of Black African and Caribbean descent who experience psychosis. This is important given the disproportionate rates of diagnosis and lack of access to psychological therapies experienced by this population. Clinical Trial: N/A Translation Manchester Accelerator Award C4T, University of Manchester
People from Sub-Saharan African and Caribbean backgrounds are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with psychotic disorders than other ethnic groups in the UK. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK recommends family therapy as a clinically effective treatment for the management of psychosis. NICE also recommends that family interventions should be culturally informed to meet the needs of an increasingly ethnically diverse population. However, people from minoritised backgrounds are rarely offered family therapy. The rise in digital mental health worldwide offers unique opportunities to support culturally informed approaches at scale and low cost.
Objective:
The overarching aim of CaFI:Digital was to help address inequalities in the provision of mental healthcare for people from Black African and Caribbean populations, by building a digital platform ‘CaFI:Digital’ to support delivery of a Culturally-Adapted Family Intervention (CaFI). The purpose of developing CaFI:Digital was to provide an accessible, user-friendly, and engaging website for service users, their families and therapists as an alternative or adjunct to in-person therapy.
Methods:
We used an iterative Agile co-design approach to develop a user-friendly and inclusive website. Co-design workshops (n = 2), semi-structured interviews (n = 2), and collaborative research team meetings (n = 3) were used to capture and prioritise end user feedback on the clinician and service-user-facing components of the platform. The software was developed using Agile sprints, with each sprint lasting 3-weeks, allowing feedback to be integrated rapidly and revised software prototypes to be shared with end users for review, revision, and approval.
Results:
Key software requirements were identified in the co-design activities and were implemented to maximise accessibility and usability of the website. Following the software development, we successfully beta-tested the software with our target end user population to ensure it was defect-free and ready for use with the target population.
Conclusions:
A digital platform to support delivery of Culturally-Adapted Family Intervention (CaFI) for psychosis was rapidly developed in a series of co-design activities. To our knowledge, this is the first bespoke digital therapy platform that has been co-designed with and for people of Black African and Caribbean descent who experience psychosis. This is important given the disproportionate rates of diagnosis and lack of access to psychological therapies experienced by this population. Clinical Trial: N/A Translation Manchester Accelerator Award C4T, University of Manchester
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publisher | JMIR Publications Inc |
| Pages | 1-24 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 28 Feb 2025 |