Project 461016

Schools are consistently identified as an ideal context to equitably address youth mental health (MH). However, in our research and youth engagement work, youth have expressed several barriers to accessing support within schools. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of the school context, and exacerbated pre-existing concerns, inequities in MH, and access to support. Moreover, youth have been consistently left out of conversations, despite recognition of the value of engaging youth to ensure research reflects their varied experiences and resultant resources meet the diverse needs of youth. This project aims to elevate youth voice through the development and dissemination of resources to improve how we support youth MH in secondary schools. We aim to co-develop and disseminate with youth (primary audience; engagement of two youth engagement committees) and school partners, namely teachers (secondary audience; engagement of a teacher advisory committee): 1) A social media suite of resources (posts, stories, reels) for Canadian secondary schools that includes MH statistics, our secondary qualitative findings, and information on available supports and how to access them. 2) A school MH brochure (2-3 pages) for Canadian secondary schools that shares national-, provincial-, and school- and community- specific MH resources. The brochure will be populated with existing national and provincial resources (e.g., Kids Help Phone, Youthspace.ca), with space allocated for schools to include school- and community-specific MH resources. 3) A national webinar and website to further disseminate resources. The webinar will bring together diverse stakeholders (e.g., school boards, policy makers, researchers, clinicians) to discuss Canadian youth MH with guest speakers (including youth) and introduce developed resources. A website will be co-developed with youth to host the freely available resources.