The Use of Mobile Applications to Support Indigenous Youth Wellbeing in Canada

Noella Noronha,Sara Smith,Dawn Martin Hill,Christine Wekerle,Savanah J Smith,Makaśa Looking Horse,Cynthia Mcqueen,Nicole M Bilodeau,Lori Davis Hill,Cynthia Lokker,Amy General,Alexander Drossos

doi:10.7202/1077724ar

Noella Noronha, Sara Smith + Show 10 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.7202/1077724ar

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Abstract

In Canada, Indigenous youth have remained resilient despite being confronted with a wide range of structural and systemic risks, such as long-lasting boil water advisories, over-representation in the child welfare system, and injustices related to land treaties. As people of the land, all disruptions to ecological health are a disruption to personal and community holistic health. Land-based activities and cultural continuity strengthen pathways of perseverance for Indigenous youth (Toombs et al., 2016). For youth, cultural self-expression and personal agency are enhanced with digital platforms, which are well-suited to Indigenous people’s strengths in art, music, and oral forms of passing on knowledge. The field of mental health has turned to e-supports such as mobile applications (apps) that can provide easy-to-access intervention, when needed. To date, resilience interventions have received comparatively less attention than the study of resilience factors and processes. It is timely to review the extant literature on mental health apps with Indigenous youth as, currently, Indigenous apps are in early research stages. Critically reviewing work to date, it is argued that an inclusive and expansive concept of resilience, coherent with Indigenous holistic health views, is well-positioned as a foundation for collaborative resilience app development. To date, few mental health apps have been researched with Indigenous youth, and fewer have been co-constructed with Indigenous youth and their community members. The current literature points to feasibility in terms of readiness or potential usage, and functionality for promoting an integrated cultural and holistic health lens. As this effort may be specific to a particular Indigenous nation’s values, stories, and practices, we highlight the Haudenosaunee conceptual wellness model as one example to guide Indigenous and non-Indigenous science integration, with a current project underway with the JoyPopTM mHealth app for promoting positive mental health and resilience.

Highlights

Structural determinants of health can negatively impact the health and wellness of Indigenous communities
Despite the examples we have provided, e-Health psychological interventions for Indigenous youth seem to have very little progression beyond feasibility or acceptability, with little to no research done in the areas of community preferences, current resilience practices, cost-effectiveness, and outcome measures that reflect culturally relevant measurements of resilience and direct measurements of youth service recipients, as compared to service providers (Toombs et al, 2020)
Indigenous youth engagement and consultation is emergent in current app development

Summary

Introduction

Structural determinants of health can negatively impact the health and wellness of Indigenous communities. Practical strategies to encourage co-creation include incorporating storytelling in providing feedback, the use of visuals (e.g., storyboards, conceptual model diagrams, research timelines and targets), meeting in community locations, and meal-sharing when application development is ongoing Within this authorship team, the Six Nations-McMaster Youth Mental Wellness Research Development and Advisory Committee was initiated in 2018 to explore youth resilience app development and research aligning with the previously mentioned literature on how technology research should be conducted. The Six Nations-McMaster Youth Mental Wellness Research Development and Advisory Committee was initiated in 2018 to explore youth resilience app development and research aligning with the previously mentioned literature on how technology research should be conducted This committee, on average, met monthly and established a partnership among non-Indigenous researchers, youth and Elder community members, health service leaders, and traditional ecological knowledge researchers in order to understand a Haudenosaunee approach to resilience. Self-determination in terms of control of what data is or is not collected, and how it is or is not used, is a strong message from the community and reflective of research ethics practices (i.e., OCAP principles: information ownership; control; access; possession)

Conclusions

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