Access to Mental Health Services: Precariously Employed Workers Experiencing Anxiety or Depression Encounter Barriers When Seeking Care

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for your work addressing this interesting area. The overall structure, flow, and content is good, but there are several areas that could benefit from additional attention.

• The introduction is remarkably short and does not provide enough clarification about or justification for this work. 
• In the methods section, you need to address additional sampling details, including the power, how participants received a link to the REDCap survey, total number of participants, duration over which the survey was open/available, did you have to open the survey more than once, ... The males to females' percentage is almost 25%, how was that decided/achieved, and wouldn't that impact the results?  Also, why did you select this specific province (Ontario), and not other or multiple province(s)? You included immigrants; however, you mentioned that the semi-structured interviews were refined to reflect country specific attributes, did you consider the different backgrounds and cultures of the different immigrant participants and how would that impact the responses and results?
• The Study Instrument section could benefit from additional information about the number and type of questions (open ended, multiple choice, forced, ...).
• In the Qualitative Interviews section, you briefly mentioned "developed collaboratively across countries participating in the broader international study" but nothing in the introduction references this work.
• In the Interpretation/strategies, your first comment advocates for more "public investment", this is easy said than done, you should address the how (some pragmatic approaches). Similarly, for your second strategy, you are recommending legislative changes, this is also easier said than done, if ever. 
• Finally, what is the added unique contribution of this work to the existing body of knowledge? 

Author Response

Please see attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear author, I found the framework of your work valuable. However, there are areas in your article that could be strengthened.

1- You partially refer to COVID-19, but it has fundamentally changed our professional practices. Therefore, you should report more on its effects on business and social psychology, both in the introduction and in the discussion.

2- You haven't provided a sample size calculation in the methodology. It's recommended. As I understand it, a non-probability method was used for sample selection; I suggest further justification for this.

3- There might be a problem with the percentage in the second row of Table 2; I recommend checking it generally. If there is a missing data issue, I would appreciate it if you added a limitations section at the end of the article to mention this point as well. You can also specify any limitations regarding sample selection in the limitations section.

4- In Table 3, the OR value for the "Self-employed with employees" variable is problematic (in both models), likely due to the small number of people in this group or a multicollinearity issue. The statistician on the author team should check for a better version.

Author Response

Please see attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf