Grant: DRA : Canada Graduate Research Scholarship - Doctoral Program (CGRS D)

While youth (12-18) can benefit from in-clinic mental healthcare, caregivers (e.g., parents) play a role in modelling what is learned at home, including emotion management strategies. Difficulties with these strategies underlie various mental health disorders. However, determining the best way to engage caregivers to support youth mental healthcare remains challenging. Given the popularity of mobile phone use among youth and caregivers, apps can offer accessible tools to support shared engagement, emotion management with youth, and shared therapeutic outcomes. The JoyPop app is one evidence-based app that has been helpful in improving emotion and coping skills among youth outside and alongside mental healthcare. This project will examine how the JoyPop app can be used as a tool to encourage emotion and coping skill management between caregivers and youth, outside and adjunct to mental health services, to support youth treatment outcomes. Using mixed research methods, Study 1 will use family functioning, emotion, and coping skill questionnaires administered before, at 2 weeks, and after 4 weeks of app use to assess changes in these areas in a non-clinical pilot sample of 30 youth and their caregivers. Ten participants will be interviewed to assess the perspectives of youth and caregivers on the app's acceptance as a support tool. In Study 2, the same design will be used to assess these outcomes in a clinical sample of 84 youth and their families as they progress through 4 months of youth mental health services. Results from this project aim to reduce mental healthcare burden and youth treatment recurrence by leveraging resources within the family to encourage clinic-based learning and skills application at home. The project could identify and support the development of an accessible and effective tool that empowers families and aids healthcare organizations in sustaining positive youth mental health beyond the provision of services.