Grant: Project Grant

Early detection of youth mental health issues is crucial to providing timely support and clinical care. MyHEARTSMAP is a digital mental health screening tool. We designed it for youth and their families, so they can quickly identify mental health concerns (and their severity) and receive information on local resources they can access directly. My-HEARTS-MAP is available online, in English and French. While we developed and verified (validated) MyHEARTSMAP with a diverse study population (age, gender, and race distribution comparable to British Columbia (BC) demographics), it does not yet account for culturally different understandings of mental health and approaches to care. For example, Mandarin and Cantonese are the most common languages spoken in Canadian households besides English and French and Chinese Canadians are also the least likely ethnic group to seek mental health care. Our goal is to revise MyHEARTSMAP for this population. To understand how to create culturally relevant and inclusive tools for Chinese families, we will conduct focus groups, moderated by a Mandarin- and/or Cantonese-speaking assistant, with 60 Chinese families in BC that include children aged 10-17. We will introduce MyHEARTSMAP and learn how they understand it; this feedback will be integrated into the revised and adapted Chinese version. Next, we will recruit another group of 100 Chinese families with no specific experience of mental health conditions, to test the modified MyHEARTSMAP. Their screening results will be compared to assessments by a Mandarin/Cantonese-speaking clinical counsellor to ensure the tool's accuracy. If validated, the Chinese version of MyHEARTSMAP will be freely available online, and advance our efforts to create equitable, accessible, and inclusive mental health tools for all cultures.