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Aim To describe a community‐specific and culturally coherent approach to youth mental health services in a small and remote northern Indigenous community in Canada's Northwest Territories, under the framework of ACCESS Open Minds (ACCESS OM), a pan‐Canadian youth mental health research and evaluation network. Methods As 1 of the 14 Canadian communities participating in a 5‐year, federally funded service transformation and evaluation project, the arctic Inuit community of Ulukhaktok has undertaken culturally relevant adjustments in their delivery of youth mental wellness services and related community wellness initiatives. These enhancement activities highlight connections to culture and traditional skills, honour youth‐ and community‐expressed desires to incorporate Inuvialuit‐specific approaches to wellness, and strengthen the support systems to improve access to mainstream mental healthcare, when needed. The adaptation of a Lay Health Worker model from Global Mental Health to the local circumstances resulting in creation of lay community health workers is central to this approach in meeting contextual needs. Results Community leaders identified key activities for sustainable change, including human capital development, authentic collaboration and diversified engagement strategies. Building around five ACCESS OM objectives, the local site team in Ulukhaktok has identified its youth programming and mental wellness service gaps through an ongoing process of community mapping. Conclusions Information from service providers, youth and other community members demonstrates attuning of the ACCESS OM framework to Inuit paradigms in Ulukhaktok. It could prove to be a sustainable prototype for delivering youth mental health services in other communities in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region and possibly across the entire Inuit Nunangat. It needs, however, to be further supported by easier access to specialized mental health services when needed.

Aim Youth mental health is of paramount significance to society globally. Given early onset of mental disorders and the inadequate access to appropriate services, a meaningful service transformation, based on globally recognized principles, is necessary. The aim of this paper is to describe a national Canadian project designed to achieve transformation of mental health services and to evaluate the impact of such transformation on individual and system related outcomes. Method We describe a model for transformation of services for youth with mental health and substance abuse problems across 14 geographically, linguistically and culturally diverse sites, including large and small urban, rural, First Nations and Inuit communities as well as homeless youth and a post-secondary educational setting. The principles guiding service transformation and objectives are identical across all sites but the method to achieve them varies depending on prevailing resources, culture, geography and the population to be served and how each community can best utilize the extra resources for transformation. Results Each site is engaged in community mapping of services followed by training, active stakeholder engagement with youth and families, early case identification initiatives, providing rapid access (within 72 hours) to an assessment of the presenting problems, facilitating connection to an appropriate service within 30 days (if required) with no transition based on age within the 11 to 25 age group and a structured evaluation to track outcomes over the period of the study. Conclusions Service transformation that is likely to achieve substantial change involves very detailed and carefully orchestrated processes guided by a set of values, principles, clear objectives, training and evaluation. The evidence gathered from this project can form the basis for scaling up youth mental health services in Canada across a variety of environments.

Background Many Canadian adolescents and young adults with mental health problems face delayed detection, long waiting lists, poorly accessible services, care of inconsistent quality and abrupt or absent inter-service transitions. To address these issues, ACCESS Open Minds, a multi-stakeholder network, is implementing and systematically evaluating a transformation of mental health services for youth aged 11 to 25 at 14 sites across Canada. The transformation plan has five key foci: early identification, rapid access, appropriate care, the elimination of age-based transitions between services, and the engagement of youth and families. Methods The ACCESS Open Minds Research Protocol has multiple components including a minimum evaluation protocol and a stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial, that are detailed in this paper. Additional components include qualitative methods and cost-effectiveness analyses. The services transformation is being evaluated at all sites via a minimum evaluation protocol. Six sites are participating in the stepped-wedge trial whereby the intervention (a service transformation along the key foci) was rolled out in three waves, each commencing six months apart. Two sites, one high-population and one low-population, were randomly assigned to each of the three waves, i.e., randomization was stratified by population size. Our primary hypotheses pertain to increased referral numbers, and reduced wait times to initial assessment and to the commencement of appropriate care. Secondary hypotheses pertain to simplified pathways to care; improved clinical, functional and subjective outcomes; and increased satisfaction among youth and families. Quantitative measures addressing these hypotheses are being used to determine the effectiveness of the intervention. Discussion Data from our overall research strategy will help test the effectiveness of the ACCESS Open Minds transformation, refine it further, and inform its scale-up. The process by which our research strategy was developed has implications for the practice of research itself in that it highlights the need to actively engage all stakeholder groups and address unique considerations in designing evaluations of complex healthcare interventions in multiple, diverse contexts. Our approach will generate both concrete evidence and nuanced insights, including about the challenges of conducting research in real-world settings. More such innovative approaches are needed to advance youth mental health services research. Trial registration number Clinicaltrials.gov, ISRCTN23349893 (Retrospectively registered: 16/02/2017). Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12888-019-2232-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The impacts of colonization have had significant impacts on the mental health and community wellness Indigenous peoples in the Northwest Territories (NWT). It is important that all communities in the NWT have access to key services in a culturally relevant way in achieving mental and community wellness. A scoping review was conducted to identify mental health services available in the NWT. To guide the understanding of the landscape of mental health services in the NWT, the information on health services gathered was organized using the First Nations Mental Wellness Continuum (FNMWC) Model’s Continuum of Essential Services. Documents accessed included grey literature, consisting of government documents, practice guidelines, education materials, community wellness reports, internet searches and expert consult interviews to collect data on mental health and wellness services in the NWT. 68 mental health services were included in this review, from 23 different sources. Results were summarized and described the Continuum of Essential Services from the FNMWC Model. This guided approach was found to be useful for mapping mental health services for communities in the NWT. The findings highlight and catagorize existing mental health services and gaps in relation to a First Nation’s perspective using the FNMWC Model. Specific areas examined included the Continuum of Essential Services, Key Partners, Culture as a Foundation, and Indigenous Social Determinants of Health. Findings can guide communities and health authorities in planning, implementing and coordinating a full range of optimized mental health services in the NWT.