If you’re curious as to how we created the project logo, please read the document below.

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The S.M.A.S.H COVID project is a community-based participatory research project that seeks to better understand the characteristics of gender and sexually diverse youth who are facing barriers to accessing mental health and substance use care services in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through using research methods, present the realities and current available services and programs. S.M.A.SH COVID will address the barriers that exist for gender and sexually diverse youth and young adults (16-29) seeking affirming mental health and substance use care services. By co-designing with youth, initial concepts of solutions in form of resources and tools to remove barriers and support individuals accessing care. The project is funded by CHIR’s Operating Grant: COVID-19 Mental Health & Substance Use Service Needs and Delivery and based out of CAMH’s Institute for Mental Health Research. 

Key Objectives:

  1. Identify the key unmet mental health and substance use care needs for gender and sexually diverse youth and young adults (16-29) in the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada.
  2. Develop a risk prediction tool linking baseline characteristics with poor mental health and substance use outcomes (e.g. anxiety, depression, suicidality, substance use disorder) at 1 year follow up among gender and sexually diverse youth in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  3. Based on unmet mental health and substance use care needs and risk factors, co-design with gender and sexually diverse youth transformations of virtual and in-person mental health and substance use care for GSD youth in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic
Project Overview Download

Our latest posts on Instagram @smashcovid

We just want to remind folks that our event “Queering Mental Health” is coming up this Wednesday! If you are interested, click the link in our bio to sign up and attend this free, virtual event. We look forward to seeing you there and continuing the discussion around standards of care for queer youth. #queer #lgbtq #lgbtcommunity #lgbtqtoronto #camh #queerhealth #lgbtqhealth SMASH COVID is hosting a free, speaker discussion that will give participants an opportunity to hear from a SMASH COVID team member, two LGBTQ2S+ youth community leaders and a speaker from Egale Canada. This will be followed by a facilitated discussion that participants are encouraged to participate in. As organizations and programs continue develop their standards of affirming care for LGBTQ2S+ populations, discussions like this one are important to understand various perspectives on this topic and learn directly from the community that is being affected. The link to register is in our bio! Can’t wait to see you there 🏳️‍🌈 As we begin the new year and new projects, we have been busy putting our policy recommendations into action. Assessing and evaluating accrediting bodies is necessary because the standards that they hold health/social services too, impact the delivery and quality of service provision. Have you ever heard of accreditation before? We are excited to share a new initiative called the Expand Project, which was created in partnership with queer and trans communities in Toronto, Thunder Bay and Montreal. To learn more about this project, swipe left ⬅️ and give them a follow for future updates and exciting announcements! We collaborated with Rainbow Services at CAMH, so that our research design had a LGBTQ2S+ informed perspective. Swipe through to learn more about this amazing queer social service! A significant sub-population identified within our study were trans youth as they had very unique barriers to access that were not experienced by other LGBTQ2S+ youth. Swipe through for a brief overview of what our trans participants had to say ➡️ As mentioned before, the approach our team used was a participatory design collaboration system model! This allowed our participants to be co-creators throughout the research process, and to ideally empower them to seek future action. After the summer study, members of our team continued to work with participants and facilitate youth groups and programs that arose from the study. Swipe left to see what this model looks like, and comment below if you have any questions 💕 This is one of many environmental scans that resulted from our online design charrette process. As you can see, 59% of participants sought out help but were faced with barriers to access. It is evident that LGBTQ2S+ resources need to be redeveloped and redesigned in collaboration with this community so that productive change is achieved! As LGBTQ2S+ already faced barriers to care pre pandemic, these barriers have been heightened and new ones have arisen during the era of virtual care. Identifying the difference between the barriers that were already present and what unique challenges emerged are one of the key things our team is in the process of. So far, we have classified some overall themes that explain what these barriers are! Comment below if you have experienced and/or can think of a pre-existing barrier to care within the LGBTQ2S+ community ⬇️

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