Early intervention services for non-psychotic mental health disorders: a scoping review protocol

Worldwide mental health disorders are associated with a considerable amount of human suffering, disability and mortality. Yet, the provision of rapid evidence-based care to mitigate the human and economic costs of these disorders is limited. The greatest progress in developing and delivering early intervention services has occurred within psychosis. There is now growing support for and calls to extend such approaches to other diagnostic groups. The aim of this scoping review is to systematically map the emerging literature on early intervention services for non-psychotic mental health disorders, with a focus on outlining how services are structured, implemented and scaled.

The protocol was developed using the guidance for scoping reviews in the Joanna Briggs Institute manual and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews checklist. A systematic search for published and unpublished literature will be conducted using the following databases: (1) MEDLINE, (2) PsycINFO, (3) HMIC, (4) EMBASE and (5) ProQuest. To be included, documents must describe and/or evaluate an early intervention service for adolescents or adults with a non-psychotic mental health disorder. There will be no restrictions on publication type, study design and date. Title and abstract, and full-text screening will be completed by one reviewer, with a proportion of articles screened in duplicate. Data analysis will primarily involve a qualitatively summary of the early intervention literature, the characteristics of early intervention services and key findings relating to their evaluation and implementation.

The synthesis of published and unpublished articles will not require ethical approval. The results of this scoping review will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and disseminated via social media, conference presentations and other knowledge translation activities.