How Our Materials Are Created

Our team is committed to creating and disseminating the highest quality mental health information (products and training programs), addressing the needs of youth (ages 12 to 25 years), families, educators, health providers, policy makers and others.

All our materials meet the following criteria:

1. Based on best available scientific information. We use numerous strategies to ensure that our materials and training programs are based on the best available scientific information. We use systematic literature reviews, bibliographic analyses, key references, input from experts, as well as other approaches to find, synthesize and interpret the best scientific information available.

2. End user participation. Every product and training program is developed using extensive end user participation. That means, for example, that materials designed for use by health providers are informed by extensive input from health providers. All our materials are distributed for field review and response.  We include input from a wide audience: youth, parents, educators (teachers, administrators, student service providers, etc), mental health providers, health providers and policy makers in the creation of our materials. This input addresses both content and design, and is used to created the final product which is reviewed and signed off by the Chair prior to distribution.  We acknolwedge the participats who have made substantial contrinbutions to our materials by noting them in our materials.

3. The process. We use an environmental scan push model based on extensive input from experts, individuals and communities to identify specific needs for materials. We also use a pull process, where organizations and institutions (such as government, health providers, educators, etc) come to us for specific requests to create materials to meet their needs.  

4. Product feedback and continuous improvement. We encourage end-users to provide feedback on all our materials. We collect and periodically review this input and use it to modify and improve our materials. Some of our products have been translated into numerous languages by our various end-users and all our materials are identified on our website. Some of our products (and training programs) under go more detailed qualitiative and quantitiative evaluations. We post varioius reports and other detailed information regarding these evaluations on our website. Please check out our resources section to download these reports.