"Secret Chat" is a co-creation project which aims to develop a youth-friendly online chat counseling service to provide psychosocial support for HKDSE students with mental health needs. It involves learning about users' experiences and needs, co-creating service protocol and tools with professionals and young people, and enhancing practitioners' competence in online chat counseling. The longer-term goal is to make online chat counseling more accessible and youth friendly. 

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The Hong Kong Youth Epidemiological Study of Mental Health conducted by the University of Hong Kong found that nearly 17% of young people aged 15-24 have a probable psychiatric disorder, yet their use of psychiatric or psychological service is critically low likely due to stigma and long wait times of mainstream services. 

Online chat counseling has been widely adopted globally by youth mental health services as it is effective in enabling communication and relationship building while maintaining accessibility, anonymity and user control during the counselling process. However, concerns over confidentiality, privacy and data security, miscommunication, crises handling and boundary issues, etc. have hindered local development of such services. "Secret Chat" aims to gather youth, practitioners and relevant professionals to find solutions collaboratively and co-create a youth-friendly online chat counselling service for HKDSE students in need. Training and supervision will also be provided to build practitioners’ capacity.