Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Jul 28, 2022
Date Accepted: May 30, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Protocol for a Comprehensive Evaluation of Canada’s Student Mental Health Network
ABSTRACT
Background:
Prevalence estimates for mental health-related problems, including above-average stress, psychological distress, and symptoms of mental illnesses have increased significantly among Canadian post-secondary students. As demand for downstream mental treatment has surpassed many institutions’ abilities to deliver timely care, there is a need for innovative, upstream supports that foster mental health promotion and mental illness prevention among this population.
Objective:
Supported by an extensive network of student volunteers, Canada's Student Mental Health Network is a virtual, one-stop shop for centralized mental health education and evidence-based resources, tailored to post-secondary students. This article describes a protocol for the comprehensive evaluation of the Network.
Methods:
Development of the Network was developed using a Participatory Action Research framework. Network content is created and curated by students and reviewed by subject matter experts. The proposed program evaluation will include both a formative process evaluation and a summative impact assessment to determine the feasibility, acceptability, and utility of the Network in addition to assessing change in the three primary outcomes of interest: mental health literacy, perceived social support, and help-seeking behaviour. Participants will be recruited directly from the Network website using “rolling” recruitment approach to allow for continuous data collection and evaluation. A combination of qualitative (i.e., interviews) and quantitative (i.e., surveys) methods of data collection will be used.
Results:
The process evaluation of the Network will begin in September 2022, collecting data for one year with follow-up surveys sent every four months. In September 2023, the impact evaluation will begin using the same follow-up schedule. Data collection with then remain ongoing to facilitate continued evaluation of the Network. Reports detailing evaluation data will be released annually.
Conclusions:
The Network is a novel and innovative method of delivering universal mental health promotion to Canadian post-secondary students by providing centralized and freely accessible mental health education and resources, created by students and validated by subject matter experts. The continued creation and curation of resources for the Network will be ongoing, in order to meet the evolving needs of the target population.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.