Culture-based prescribing to improve mental health: a scoping review protocol

Objective: The objective of this review is to investigate what is known about culture-based prescribing to improve mental health and well-being.Introduction: Culture-based prescribing, where a person is referred by a clinical professional to an arts or cultural activity aimed at improving mental health and well-being, is increasingly used as a community-based source of support. Although culture-based prescribing seems promising, the field is heterogeneous with respect to definition, underlying hypotheses, and cultural activity. This hampers its further development and implementation.Inclusion criteria: We will consider publications that report on or explore culture-based prescribing to improve mental health and well-being for adults with symptoms related to mental health conditions who are seeking care from any clinical professional.Methods: We will search 8 electronic literature databases for published or unpublished reports on culture-based prescribing, without date limits. We will also search for gray literature and screen reference lists of relevant reviews. No language restrictions will be applied during the screening process, but for data extraction, we will only extract studies in languages our team has proficiency in. The screening and data extraction will be performed by 2 reviewers, independently. Data analysis will be descriptive, with results tabulated separately for each subquestion. The results will be complemented with a narrative summary.

Automated summary

The objective of this review is to investigate the effects of culture-based prescribing on improving mental health and well-being. Although culture-based prescribing shows promise as a community-based source of support, there is heterogeneity in the field regarding definition, underlying hypotheses, and cultural activity, which hinders further development and implementation.