Conversational AI for Global Adolescent Mental Health: Evidence and Co-design with Young People

Lead supervisor: Professor Mina Fazel

Co-supervisors: Dr Holly Bear, Dr Mirela Zaneva

Commercial partner: Girl Effect

Adolescence is a formative stage of life and a critical window for mental health. Half of all lifetime mental health conditions begin before 18, yet access to effective care is grossly unequal. Globally, most young people live in low- and middle-income countries where specialist services are scarce. Addressing this gap is a priority for improving health, reducing inequalities, and preventing lifelong disadvantage. Digital technologies offer a potential way to extend access to mental health support. AI-driven conversational agents (text- or voice-based digital companions) are emerging as scalable and cost-effective interventions. However, evidence on their effectiveness and safety, especially in underrepresented and low-resource settings, remains limited. This doctoral project will generate urgently needed insight into how conversational AI can be designed, implemented, and evaluated to support adolescent mental health in diverse contexts.

Phase 1: Understanding the current landscape. The aim of this phase is to examine both efficacy and implementation of conversational agents for adolescent mental health, identifying what works, for whom, and in what contexts. To achieve this, the student will conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis, and may also analyse the most recent large-scale survey data on adolescent mental health and digital engagement. The OxWell Student Survey is one of the few adolescent population surveys worldwide to include items on digital mental health and AI, making it highly relevant beyond the UK. These analyses will provide rare empirical insights to complement findings from low- and middle-income countries and help situate the project in a global evidence base. To extend reach further, the student may also adapt these survey items for an online sample targeting adolescents in regions where Girl Effect operates, allowing meaningful comparisons across high-income and low-resource settings.

Phase 2: Youth perspectives, intervention design, and evaluation. The aim of this phase is to understand how young people perceive and engage with conversational agents, and to test approaches for making them feasible, culturally relevant, and ethically acceptable. The student will be embedded within Girl Effect’s team and contribute to evaluation activities, secondary data analysis, and participatory research with young people. This may involve the co-design or adaptation of a conversational-agent intervention, alongside contributing to evaluation activities within Girl Effect’s programmes. Using participatory methods including youth advisory boards, workshops, and qualitative interviews, the student will investigate how interventions can be made culturally relevant, inclusive, and accessible. Where feasible, they may also undertake feasibility studies or small-scale trials, for example through pre–post studies, staged rollouts, or optimisation of intervention components. The student will also seek to engage with technology companies and digital platforms to better understand the algorithms and safeguard mechanisms that shape young people’s digital experiences.

The project addresses MRC priorities in mental health, early prevention, and global health inequalities. It combines epidemiological, participatory, and applied evaluation methods to produce rigorous and actionable evidence, while advancing understanding of adolescent development and ethical technology use.

The academic team provides expertise in adolescent psychiatry, digital mental health, and epidemiology. Girl Effect offers access to digital platforms reaching millions of adolescents globally, alongside expertise in ethical AI design, participatory research, and implementation. This collaboration will ensure that findings are scientifically robust and directly translatable into practice and policy. Together, Oxford and Girl Effect will equip the student to bridge research and implementation, delivering meaningful advances in adolescent mental health.

 For further details about the project please contact Dr Holly Bear.

Apply using course: DPhil in Psychiatry