Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

In Canada, 74% of youth pursue higher education after high school; this is often the first time young people move away from home and assume adult responsibilities. This experience can cause great financial, academic, and social stress, and can give rise to severe mental health concerns. Post-secondary students are particularly susceptible to persistent mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. However, few tools exist to identify these concerns early and connect students with care. As a result, students may not receive support until a crisis situation, when treatment may not be as effective. To address these issues, this research aims to: 1) Engage young people, post-secondary healthcare providers, and mental health experts in developing a screening tool (HEARTSMAP-U) that students can use to determine their mental health needs and seek out appropriate and accessible support. 2) Assess how reliably and accurately students score their mental health status using HEARTSMAP-U compared to healthcare provider assessments. 3) Explore how acceptable the screening tool and its digital format are for students (e.g., is it easy to use and navigate), and how feasible screening is for students and whether it reduces unnecessary health care visits (e.g., are students less likely to go to the emergency department?). Finally, this work will examine whether screening affects students' likelihood of accessing mental health resources and whether it changes how they view their own mental health. In summary, this work will contribute to the development of a reliable and accurate mental health self-assessment tool to identify youth who could benefit from early intervention in post-secondary settings, while improving coordination and access to appropriate mental health care for an under-served population.