Cohort Network for Adolescents and Youth With multipLe Mental Health Conditions

The Cohort Network for Adolescents and Youth With multipLe Mental Health Conditions (CALM) Master Observational Trial is a prospective, longitudinal observational study that seeks to improve clinical care for youth with multiple mental health conditions (MMHC), also known as mental health multimorbidity in the literature. MMHC is conceptualized as the presence of two or more mental health diagnoses under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). MMHC is common in youth seeking mental health services and is associated with less favorable outcomes and greater health services utilization. Mental health disorders also accumulate in youth over time. The Master Observational Trial (MOT) will investigate MMHC in critical developmental periods in youth and identify risk and protective factors that will provide a mechanistic understanding of how MMHC develops over time. A subset of participants will also enroll in a Deep Phenotyping Cohort, which includes enhanced clinical and cognitive assessments and multimodal neuroimaging to investigate neurobiological mechanisms underlying MMHC and identify potential biomarkers of illness complexity and progression. In the near future, we aim to add to the current protocol to embed both a clinical trials network for youth mental health in Ontario and Calgary within the CALM study and add digital phenotyping using wearable technology to generate digital and physiological markers of MMHC. The current protocol focuses on establishing the longitudinal MOT cohort and Deep Phenotype Cohort only as a first step towards these long term CALM goals.