Grant: Catalyst Grant: Patient-Oriented Research

MAYNet (Mental health and Addictions Youth Network) will connect organizations and champions across Canada to explore what youth-friendliness looks like in a Canadian, mental health and addictions context. The goal is to conduct a mixed-methods approach to scan the environment and lay the groundwork for a youth-friendly mental health and addiction services research protocol. The World Health Organization (WHO) released its Adolescent-Friendly Health Services Framework in 2002, which officially highlighted the different needs of adolescents to the attention of healthcare providers around the world. In response to this framework, Ambresin and colleagues completed a systematic review in 2013 which revisited the WHO AFHS with an emphasis on youth perspective and expanded the definition of youth to include youth 12-25 years. Despite the availability of AFHS resources, youth-friendliness remains a poorly defined concept in Canada's youth mental health and addictions services. Many initiatives have included youth-friendliness as a core principle of quality services, but do not specifically define or measure youth-friendliness. MAYNet will leverage existing networks in each process to explore the need for a Canadian framework for youth-friendliness in mental health and addictions services by building on the work already done by WHO and Ambresin. MAYNet will engage and empower the youth lived-experience voice and strengthen youth-partnerships in mental health and addictions research using Youth Participatory Action Research methods. Our network will be guided by a national youth council with a dedicated strategy for maintaining engagement with youth with lived-experience accessing mental health and addictions services. The expected outcomes for this initiative are: 1) improved quality of care in participating youth mental health and addictions services; 2) improved mental health outcomes for youth accessing services; 3) improved health outcomes for youth participants.