King’s Birthday Honours: Digital mental health pioneer Nick Titov becomes Member of the Order of Australia

WA-based digital mental health pioneer Nick Titov’s goal is to become redundant in a bid to make all Australians mentally well.

It was the early 2000s when the Macquarie University psychology professor realised there would never be enough mental health professionals in the country to see everybody face to face so he started running clinical trials, revealing online services could help just as well.

He has since become a pioneer in the digital mental health landscape — creating Australia’s first free telephone and online mental health clinic, Mindspot, in 2012.

It’s what has earned him the honour of becoming a Member of the Order of Australia (AM), in recognition of his “significant service to digital mental health and wellness, and to tertiary education”.

“I feel this award really reflects the support I’ve had from my family and my dear colleagues and friends — it’s really a big effort by lots and lots of people over many, many years,” he said.

“It’s incredibly satisfying, personally and professionally, and I joke with my colleagues that I see my primary role as making myself redundant.

I think we’re starting to actually understand the triggers for good mental health but also poor mental health.

“If I can achieve that by supporting people to improve their mental health, then we know that the mental health of their family and their community is strengthened.”

The MindSpot executive director said creating an online mental health platform had given people more choice and reduced barriers to access care.

MindSpot offers free online treatment courses that target symptoms as well as teletherapy sessions to more than 30,000 people across Australia.

“There are geographical barriers but we know still today people sometimes feel stigma or even shame about reaching out to a health professional and if they can do that semi-anonymously online or via telephone it’s much more accessible,” he said.

“The other group, of course, are the people who work shifts and they just can’t during the day get out to see somebody.

“Services like mind spot aren’t a panacea but really people need to have choice and I think we’ve been able to inspire a whole group of other services to evolve and develop as well, which is excellent.”

His King’s Honour also recognises his tertiary education efforts for filling a gap in mental health training.

“We established the Mindspot Academy and now we train about 25 students or interns each year from across the country,” he said.

“What we really want to be able to do is to ensure that the workforce of the future has a broad range of really practical skills so they can work online and face to face.”

It’s been almost 20 years since Professor Titov began researching digital mental health but he has no plans of stopping.

Now, working to find out what preventative measures help keep people mentally healthy.

He found people who do “the big five” activities — positive thinking, meaningful activities that give a sense of accomplishment, having goals and plans to look forward to, healthy routines, and staying connected with people — three to four times a week are likely to have good mental health.

“The big area for me now is about supporting people to look after their own mental health as much as possible,” he said.

“What we’ve been doing over a number of clinical trials, with more than 25,000 people now, is finding that there are things people can do, and if they do them enough, their mental health can improve.

“I think we’re starting to actually understand the triggers for good mental health but also poor mental health.”