Designing a mental health literacy programme for Canadian sport coaches: a roadmap for scholars, practitioners, and organisations

Mental health literacy training is a foundational strategy for strengthening mental health-related knowledge, attitudes, behaviours, and conditions that may support well-being within sport systems; however, coach-specific programmes remain limited and conceptually inconsistent. This paper presents the Design Phase of a three-phase national project aimed at developing a comprehensive mental health literacy programme for Canadian coaches: the CCMHS Workshop Trilogy. Guided by Canada’s Mental Health Strategy for High Performance Sport and the Mental Triad model (mental health, mental illness, and mental performance), the programme was developed through a participatory process involving 50 collaborators. A planning evaluation and logic model informed the integration of contextual conditions (e.g., linguistic, geographic, cultural diversity), programme inputs, and desired outcomes. The four design inputs included (a) Task Force Consultation, (b) Materials Adaptation, (c) Digital Programming and Pilot Testing, and (d) Facilitator Recruitment and Training. The resulting programme trilogy comprises three bilingual workshops in synchronous and asynchronous formats, developed as supplemental learning opportunities within national coach education systems. This work contributes to coach development by incorporating sport-informed, trauma-informed, and diversity, equity, inclusivity, belonging, justice, and accessibility (DEIBJA)-informed principles in mental health literacy programming. It advances a holistic definition of mental health literacy that integrates mental health promotion and protection, mental illness recognition and response, stigma reduction, help-seeking, and self-management (e.g., self-care, mental performance). Recommendations for developing coach mental health literacy programmes are provided for scholars, sport psychology practitioners, and organisations and include designing for holistic mental functioning, integrated mental health literacy, coach participation, contextual relevance, and sustainability.