Community-Embedded Mental Health Promotion Programs: A Scoping Integrative Review Protocol

by Taylor Hill, Sophie Keddy, Alanna Kaser, Lindsay Heyland

Abstract: Positive mental health promotion is an emerging field within community mental health, as programming and policy efforts devoted to promoting mental health are beginning to surface. These efforts are varied in scope and nature, and there is little consensus across theoretical background or evidence base, program best practices, and alignment with provincial mental health policy. This study protocol outlines a scoping review of peer-reviewed and grey literature, to map positive mental health promotion by identifying the characteristics and participants of such programs and the contexts of their implementation. We will also document the current offerings in a Canadian province to provide insight into the types, scope, and nature of the programs currently and previously available to community residents and assess fit with the best available evidence identified from the peer-reviewed literature. To be included, peer-reviewed literature must be relevant to community mental health promotion, and grey literature must contain details of relevant programs accessible to the general community. Papers published after 2000 in English, on primary studies evaluating or documenting positive mental health promotion programs, will be included. Grey literature from an environmental scan of existing local programs will be included. Data to be extracted includes program scope, content, materials and methods, evaluation methodology, and outcomes. The results of this review will be synthesized evidence on best practices and promising indicators of community-embedded mental health promotion programs, which seek to promote positive mental health in the general population, and an application these findings to an environmental scan of existing programs in Nova Scotia.