# Personalised care, youth mental health, and digital technology: A value sensitive design perspective and framework

## TL;DR

This paper proposes a framework for ethically designing digital mental health tools for youth, focusing on personalisation, empowerment, and autonomy.

## Contribution

A new conceptual framework with 15 design norms for ethical digital mental health technology for youth is introduced.

## Key findings

- A framework comprising three values and 15 design norms was developed for ethical digital mental health design.
- The framework was applied to both new and existing technologies to highlight ethical considerations.
- Key design recommendations for youth mental health technology were identified.

## Abstract

Digital health is typically driven, in part, by the principle of personalised care. However, the underlying values and associated ethical design considerations at the intersection of personalised care, youth mental health, and digital technology are underexplored. Through a value sensitive design lens, this work aims to contribute a prototype conceptual framework for the ethical design and evaluation of personalised youth digital mental health technology, which comprises three values–personalisation, empowerment, and autonomy–and 15 design norms as fundamental yet non-exhaustive ethical criteria. Furthermore, it provides illustrative applications of the framework by applying it to (1) the proactive design of two exemplary digital mental health technologies to draw out emerging ethical considerations and (2) the retrospective evaluation of three existing technologies to assess whether they are designed to support personalisation, empowerment, and autonomy. This work creates an understanding of personalised care and related values in this socio-technical context, with key design recommendations going forward for youth digital mental health research, practice, and associated policy.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10676-025-09866-x.