Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

E-Mental; E-Mental Health; Emotion Regulation; Indigenous; Intervention; Joypop; Mental Health; Minimally Clinical Important Difference; Mobile Health; Northwestern Ontario; Resilience

In Canada, there is growing interest in developing mobile health (mHealth) interventions to support the increasing mental health difficulties among youth. However, many apps lack scientific research to support their effectiveness claims. Support for apps among diverse clinical samples of youth, including Indigenous youth, is lagging even further behind. The broad objective of the present study is to better understand the use of an mHealth app to support youth seeking services at two partnering mental health agencies within Ontario (i.e., Children’s Centre Thunder Bay, Dilico Anishinabek Family Care). The JoyPopTM app is an evidence-based mHealth app developed to support resilience and emotion regulation in youth. As a component of a larger evaluation and randomized controlled design assessing the effectiveness of JoyPopTM as a tool for youth who are waiting for mental health services, this project will determine the minimal clinically important difference (MCID), as defined by youth using the JoyPop app, to measure the minimum change in emotion regulation that youth consider to be important. A sample of 68 youth (age 12-25) awaiting mental health services through partner agencies will be recruited to participate in the randomized controlled trial. Those randomized to the intervention group will be asked to use the JoyPopTM app for 4 weeks. The MCID will be calculated using the mean emotion regulation change scores for participants who report a somewhat better change in emotion regulation on the Global Rating of Change Scale. Defining the MCID for the JoyPop app provides a novel contribution to the e-mental health treatment field that can inform future mHealth interventions and provide information about the clinical improvements youth expect when using a mHealth app.