Grant: Operating Grant: Population Health Intervention Research

Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is an evidence-based mental health promotion program demonstrated to increase individuals' skills and knowledge about how to respond in a mental health crisis. Similar to regular first aid, the goal is not to turn individuals into health care providers, but to give them the skills to recognize a potential mental health crisis and intervene in a way that ensures safety until trained professionals are available. It is currently used across Canada, including in First Nations communities; however, previous evaluation in First Nations in Alberta found a critical need to culturally adapt the course. Over the past two years the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) has worked with consultants and community partners to adapt the MHFA program to be more culturally appropriate. The adapted program (MHFA-FN) is currently being piloted in three First Nations communities. The pilot process ends in March 2013, but the MHCC is committed to continuing to support the program in those three communities and begin to scale it up to other communities. The proposed research will use a combination of interviews, focus groups, implementation tracking, and surveys to study the implementation of this adapted course and whether it is acceptable to the communities, feasible to implement, and effective in changing attitudes and skills similar to the original course. The research will provide an important evidence base for MHFA-FN as it begins to be scaled up. The evaluation will also look at process issues such as what factors increase a community's readiness for the course, and to what extent communities further localize the adapted course. The impact of this research process will go beyond MHFA-FN and document challenges and successes of the adaptation process that can help other organizations who are seeking to adapt evidence-based practices for First Nations contexts.