Congratulations to Professor Aisling Mulligan who led a team including Dr Tara Rudd, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Child Art Psychotherapists Anne Coffey and Maria Joyce, and UCD medical students, on research developing an assessment tool for children’s mental health.
Their paper, ‘Development, preliminary validation and reliability of the colourful ‘‘My feelings Form’’ self-report for young children’ explores the creation and testing of the "My Feelings Form" which is an innovative new paper-based form to assess children's mental health, using cartoons and emoji.
Since this paper was published in 2022, Professor Mulligan has led the development of a digital assessment tool for children using the "My Feelings Form" called 'telTaz,' in collaboration with NovaUCD and the School of Computers, DCU. Professor Aisling Mulligan and Child Art Psychotherapists Anne Coffey and Maria Joyce are working together on the development of telTaz. You can view a video regarding telTaz here.
telTaz is now being tested in a clinical setting. Professor Mulligan received a UCD Health Affairs Academic Health Science System (AHSS) Grant (2023) to perform a usability study on the telTaz digital mental health assessment tool in various CAMHS and paediatric services nationally. She has also been awarded a Feasibility Grant from Enterprise Ireland to prepare the way to apply for a Commercialisation Fund from Enterprise Ireland.
The team have shown their innovations to several healthcare professionals nationally and internationally and have received positive endorsements.
If a clinical service would like to introduce either the paper based "My Feelings Form" or the digital telTaz mental health assessment tool to their service, they can contact Prof Aisling Mulligan at aisling.mulligan@ucd.ie.
Pictured above (l-r) are telTaz team members; Associate Professor Aisling Mulligan, UCD School of Medicine Maria Joyce and Anne Coffey. (Credit: Jenny Callanan).