Social and occupational outcomes for young people who attend early intervention mental health services

To the Editor: We must clarify that the findings of Iorfino and colleagues1 do not apply to headspace clients. This understandable misperception comes from the article’s title, “early intervention mental health services”, and participants coming from “clinics” that “provide both primary care services (headspace) and more specialised services”. Quotes from an InSight+ article2 and the accompanying editorial3 infer that the findings generalise to headspace, but they do not.

Although some participants in the Iorfino study came from two headspace-branded centres, they also included young people accessing specialised services. This is evident in the limitations: “our sample was restricted to young people who remained in contact with the service for at least two years … biasing our sample towards people who required ongoing care and were accordingly more likely to have poorer outcomes”.