Handbook
Mental Health and Help-Seeking Intelligence
Recognize mental-health concerns, support appropriate help-seeking, prepare for care, coordinate support, and route urgent safety needs without diagnosing or acting as a therapist.
Updated
Definition
Recognize mental-health concerns, support appropriate help-seeking, prepare for care, coordinate support, and route urgent safety needs without diagnosing or acting as a therapist.
Coverage role
Mental health affects functioning, relationships, education, work, and physical health; safe navigation and early help-seeking have broad value.
Scope
Included
- concern and functioning summary
- help-level routing
- service navigation
- appointment preparation
- support planning
- change monitoring
- crisis routing
Excluded and non-goals
- diagnosis
- therapy
- medication advice
- unverified screener interpretation
- replacing crisis services
- encouraging secrecy from safe support
Boundary rules
- Route to life.mental-health-help-seeking when the requested outcome requires one or more declared capabilities and the output can be represented by its canonical artifacts.
- Route to an adjacent or specialist intelligence when domain-specific rules, tools, or professional authority dominate the problem.
- Use general.reasoning to coordinate multi-pack conflicts, hard constraints, uncertainty, and decision status.
- Return ask, defer, or escalate when required context, source authority, consent, or accountable ownership is missing.
Capability semantics
| Capability ID | Name | Semantic intent |
|---|---|---|
capability.life.mental-health-help-seeking.summarize_concerns |
Summarize Concerns | Organize changes in mood, thought, behavior, sleep, substance use, relationships, work, self-care, and safety. |
capability.life.mental-health-help-seeking.route_help_level |
Route Help Level | Distinguish self-support, routine care, urgent assessment, crisis support, emergency response, and safeguarding. |
capability.life.mental-health-help-seeking.find_support_options |
Find Support Options | Compare verified local primary, specialist, crisis, peer, school, workplace, and social-care routes. |
capability.life.mental-health-help-seeking.prepare_help_conversation |
Prepare Help Conversation | Create a concise brief, examples, goals, and questions for a clinician or trusted person. |
capability.life.mental-health-help-seeking.build_support_plan |
Build Support Plan | Clarify who can help, consent, privacy, roles, and review triggers. |
capability.life.mental-health-help-seeking.monitor_change |
Monitor Change | Track functioning and change without diagnostic interpretation. |
capability.life.mental-health-help-seeking.recognize_crisis |
Recognize Crisis | Detect immediate danger, self-harm, violence, psychosis, severe intoxication, abuse, or inability to care for self. |
Canonical artifact concepts
| Artifact type | Structural category | Semantic purpose |
|---|---|---|
artifact.life.mental-health-help-seeking.mental_health_concern_summary |
context_profile | Mental Health Concern Summary for Mental Health and Help-Seeking Intelligence: A bounded context profile that separates observations, preferences, constraints, uncertainty, time scope, and next questions. It supports the pack purpose of recognize mental-health concerns, support appropriate help-seeking, prepare for care, coordinate support, and route urgent safety needs without diagnosing or acting as a therapist. |
artifact.life.mental-health-help-seeking.help_seeking_route |
decision | Help Seeking Route for Mental Health and Help-Seeking Intelligence: A bounded decision or routing record that exposes alternatives, governing constraints, evidence, rationale, ownership, status, and reopening conditions. It supports the pack purpose of recognize mental-health concerns, support appropriate help-seeking, prepare for care, coordinate support, and route urgent safety needs without diagnosing or acting as a therapist. |
artifact.life.mental-health-help-seeking.verified_support_options |
portfolio | Verified Support Options for Mental Health and Help-Seeking Intelligence: A deliberately varied set of candidates with lineage, constraints, screening state, and selection rationale. It supports the pack purpose of recognize mental-health concerns, support appropriate help-seeking, prepare for care, coordinate support, and route urgent safety needs without diagnosing or acting as a therapist. |
artifact.life.mental-health-help-seeking.appointment_brief |
brief | Appointment Brief for Mental Health and Help-Seeking Intelligence: A bounded specification of purpose, stakeholders, requirements, constraints, assumptions, and success criteria. It supports the pack purpose of recognize mental-health concerns, support appropriate help-seeking, prepare for care, coordinate support, and route urgent safety needs without diagnosing or acting as a therapist. |
artifact.life.mental-health-help-seeking.support_plan |
plan | Support Plan for Mental Health and Help-Seeking Intelligence: A governed action design that sequences work, ownership, dependencies, timing, contingencies, and review. It supports the pack purpose of recognize mental-health concerns, support appropriate help-seeking, prepare for care, coordinate support, and route urgent safety needs without diagnosing or acting as a therapist. |
artifact.life.mental-health-help-seeking.change_log |
ledger | Change Log for Mental Health and Help-Seeking Intelligence: A controlled collection of uniquely identified entries with ownership, provenance, status, and review state. It supports the pack purpose of recognize mental-health concerns, support appropriate help-seeking, prepare for care, coordinate support, and route urgent safety needs without diagnosing or acting as a therapist. |
artifact.life.mental-health-help-seeking.crisis_escalation_record |
decision | Crisis Escalation Record for Mental Health and Help-Seeking Intelligence: A bounded decision or routing record that exposes alternatives, governing constraints, evidence, rationale, ownership, status, and reopening conditions. It supports the pack purpose of recognize mental-health concerns, support appropriate help-seeking, prepare for care, coordinate support, and route urgent safety needs without diagnosing or acting as a therapist. |
Method families and limits
| Method ID | Method | Use when | Avoid when |
|---|---|---|---|
method.life.mental-health-help-seeking.rights_based_navigation |
rights-based navigation | Use when rights, obligations, eligibility, deadlines, authority, or official procedure differ by jurisdiction or institution. | Avoid using an unresolved source family as evidence, assuming one jurisdiction applies, or turning general information into binding legal or regulatory advice. |
method.life.mental-health-help-seeking.functional_impact_description |
functional-impact description | Use to organize concerns, functional impact, preferences, privacy, options, and timelines for appropriate professional or community support. | Avoid diagnosis, treatment selection, promises of confidentiality beyond the service rules, or delaying crisis, safeguarding, or urgent medical routes. |
method.life.mental-health-help-seeking.stepped_care_routing_where_official |
stepped-care routing where official | Use to organize concerns, functional impact, preferences, privacy, options, and timelines for appropriate professional or community support. | Avoid diagnosis, treatment selection, promises of confidentiality beyond the service rules, or delaying crisis, safeguarding, or urgent medical routes. |
method.life.mental-health-help-seeking.support_activation |
support activation | Use when a person benefits from small practical steps, emotional acknowledgment, choice, and support without turning distress into a purely logistical problem. | Avoid pushing action before safety and readiness, minimizing grief or distress, making the person responsible for unavailable support, or delaying professional help. |
method.life.mental-health-help-seeking.plain_language_preparation |
plain-language preparation | Use when meaning, participation, trust, accessibility, or action depends on adapting a message and confirming shared understanding. | Avoid manipulative framing, false simplicity, disclosure beyond consent, or treating silence and repetition as proof of understanding. |
method.life.mental-health-help-seeking.crisis_gates |
crisis gates | Use when potential harm must be detected, prioritized, contained, routed, and recorded without exceeding available authority. | Avoid delaying emergency or safeguarding routes, asking for unnecessary sensitive detail, or giving instructions that increase exposure, destroy evidence, or conflict with official guidance. |
Pack-specific invariants
The pack also inherits the core invariants in core/core_invariants.yaml.
| Invariant ID | Statement | Failure action |
|---|---|---|
invariant.life.mental-health-help-seeking.01_the_person_s_own_language_is_preserved |
The person's own language is preserved. | escalate |
invariant.life.mental-health-help-seeking.02_crisis_and_safeguarding_override_self_help |
Crisis and safeguarding override self-help. | escalate |
invariant.life.mental-health-help-seeking.03_service_information_is_current_and_local |
Service information is current and local. | escalate |
invariant.life.mental-health-help-seeking.04_the_assistant_is_not_positioned_as_sole_support |
The assistant is not positioned as sole support. | escalate |
Dependencies and relations
Operational general intelligences: None
Foundation concepts: general.affective-self-regulation, general.diagnostic, general.epistemic-evidence, general.communication-explanatory, general.ethical-normative
Life intelligences: life.emotional-regulation-resilience, life.health-navigation-self-care, life.relationships-intimacy-conflict, life.sleep-recovery-energy
Source roles
| Source ID | Claim roles | Runtime resolution required |
|---|---|---|
who.mental_health |
concept_definition, health_or_safety_boundary, population_guidance | True |
local.authority |
jurisdiction_rule, runtime_fact, service_or_community_context | True |
un.crpd.accessibility |
concept_definition | True |
Risk and authority boundary
Risk class: critical
- Immediate danger self-harm violence psychosis severe intoxication or inability to care for self.
- Abuse or safeguarding concerns.
- Severe or sustained functional decline.
Accountable people retain consent, value, regulated, irreversible, and residual-risk decisions. This semantic page does not claim a deployed implementation.
Maturity
semantic: S3_reviewable_definition
contract: C3_testable_contract
implementation: I0_not_included
evidence: E2_source_roles_mapped
governance: G2_controls_and_review_defined
overlay: O2_paired_seed_complete
Paired overlay
Runtime maturity
- Capabilities: 7
- Technical floor→ceiling:
I1_runtime→I1_runtime - Autonomy floor→ceiling:
A0_assisted→A0_assisted - I1_runtime count: 7
- Evidence class:
contract: 7 - Full hierarchy: MATURITY-HIERARCHY.md
Evaluation suite status
- CI status:
pass - Suite:
evaluation_suites/mental-health-help-seeking.yaml - Cases defined: 7
- Capabilities under test: 7