Co-development of a Mental Health Data Discovery Platform and Harmonisation of Mental Health Measures for Young People in South Africa (PAMHoYA) - A research protocol

Abstract

Africa’s mental health information landscape is widely recognised as fragmented, limiting planning, budgeting, and service delivery. In South Africa, this fragmentation is reflected in the collection of depression and anxiety data across multiple institutions and studies, using different instruments, constraining comparability, synthesis, and secondary use. This protocol describes the co-development of an open-access, user-oriented mental health data discovery platform and harmonisation of mental health measures for young people in South Africa (PAMHoYA). The platform is designed to improve the discoverability and comparability of existing mental health data for young people aged 15–24 years, using publicly available South African sources. Through a process of co-development, we will work with lived experience experts of common mental health disorders, researchers including academics, the National Department of Health, and civil society to a) map and integrate available metadata sources in South Africa containing information on depressive and anxiety symptoms; b) design the mental health data search platform; c) retrospectively harmonise mental health measures using Natural Language Processing; and d) make harmonised datasets openly accessible via a data repository. The platform aims to facilitate data findability and instrument metadata harmonisation thereby enabling secondary analysis of large mental health datasets, supporting national and subnational estimates, and identifying gaps in the current mental health data. This has the potential to strengthen mental health research, surveillance, and evidence-informed policy in South Africa. The protocol outlines the platform’s design, stakeholder engagement approach, and planned evaluation.