Behavioural Development, Long-term Outcomes and Opportunities to Optimize Youth Mental Health Trajectories

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• Due to the requirements of assessment procedures, youth who cannot communicate verbally due to known neurological conditions or intellectual disabilities will not be included. Youth who are already diagnosed with one of the DMDs by a physician and currently prescribed a treatment targeting the diagnosed condition (pharmacological or psychotherapeutic interventions), will not be eligible for inclusion.
  • Importantly, no one will be excluded based on sex, gender, health insurance status, ethnicity, income status, ability to travel or living arrangements. If a participant initially approached through the referral pathways for non help-seeking individuals turns out to have had at least one help-seeking contact for a mental health concern (i.e., clinical needs), the participant will still be included but classified as part of the help-seeking group. We anticipate non help-seeking referrals to satisfy more than one criteria. Their occurrence and distribution will be recorded in detail as part of our assessment procedure.

• Youth between 9 to 25 years of age at inclusion, who are able to read and understand either French or English, with at least one parent or legal guardian available to consent for those under 18 years of age.
• Specific eligibility criteria:
• Help-seeking group: At least one help-seeking contact made with a primary care clinical service provider or agency (e.g, paediatric/family physician clinic, CLSC or Aire Ouverte) for a mental health concern (i.e., clinical needs).
• Non help-seeking group:
• At least one of the birth parents or siblings have received psychiatric care for a diagnosis of DMDs (i.e., family needs) OR Being in contact with community agencies that provide youth-centred social services for food, housing, social discrimination (e.g., racialized youth, LGBTQ2SIA+) (i.e., social needs) OR Having a diagnosed chronic physical illness that is expected to require treatment for >12 months (e.g., diabetes, asthma to name a few) (i.e., physical health needs)