College students' perceived confidence in mental health help-seeking

Vidourek, Rebecca A.; King, Keith A.; Nabors, Laura; Lynch, Amanda; Merianos, Ashley L.

doi:10.1080/14623730.2014.892257

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Students were also four times more likely to report feeling confident in helping a peer with a mental health problem after receiving the teen MHFA training. Given that confidence has been found to be a predictor of quality first aid intentions [ 30 , 51 , 62 – 66 ], this finding is particularly important. This is also reflected in the large number of students who reported feeling ‘well prepared’ for helping someone in the future if they were to come across a peer with a mental health problem, even though they had not experienced a first aid situation in the last 3 months.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘teen Mental Health First Aid’: a description of the program and an initial evaluation

Hart

Mason

Kelly

et al. 2016

Int J Ment Health Syst

141

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BackgroundMany adolescents have poor mental health literacy, stigmatising attitudes towards people with mental illness, and lack skills in providing optimal Mental Health First Aid to peers. These could be improved with training to facilitate better social support and increase appropriate help-seeking among adolescents with emerging mental health problems. teen Mental Health First Aid (teen MHFA), a new initiative of Mental Health First Aid International, is a 3 × 75 min classroom based training program for students aged 15–18 years.MethodsAn uncontrolled pilot of the teen MHFA course was undertaken to examine the feasibility of providing the program in Australian secondary schools, to test relevant measures of student knowledge, attitudes and behaviours, and to provide initial evidence of program effects.ResultsAcross four schools, 988 students received the teen MHFA program. 520 students with a mean age of 16 years completed the baseline questionnaire, 345 completed the post-test and 241 completed the three-month follow-up. Statistically significant improvements were found in mental health literacy, confidence in providing Mental Health First Aid to a peer, help-seeking intentions and student mental health, while stigmatising attitudes significantly reduced.Conclusionsteen MHFA appears to be an effective and feasible program for training high school students in Mental Health First Aid techniques. Further research is required with a randomized controlled design to elucidate the causal role of the program in the changes observed.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13033-016-0034-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘teen Mental Health First Aid’: a description of the program and an initial evaluation

Hart

Mason

Kelly

et al. 2016

Int J Ment Health Syst

141

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“…However, females were more likely to express their intentions to engage in certain actions, such as exploring the problem of their depressed peer and encouraging/helping them to get informal help. This greater propensity among female undergraduates to engage in person-centred and social-network-related approaches may be a by-product of gender-related differences, where females show greater confidence to support a friend with mental health problems, have higher levels of empathy and greater skills to provide emotional support [24, 67, 68]. …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While these students are frequently faced with friends or family who are affected by mental health problems [24–29], they consider one another as preferred sources of help when dealing with such problems [10–15, 29]. Moreover, they may seek the help of other students when attempting to help distressed peers [30].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, they may seek the help of other students when attempting to help distressed peers [30]. However, these students may vary in their confidence about helping their mentally distressed peers [24, 31, 32], and lack confidence in their ability to respond to peers with severe problems [25, 33]. Therefore, the mental health first aid knowledge and skills of university students must be assessed and improved when attempting to ensure that those who are distressed in this population get the appropriate assistance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Helping intentions of undergraduates towards their depressed peers: a cross-sectional study in Sri Lanka

et al. 2017

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BackgroundDespite showing high rates of depression, university students prefer to seek assistance for their depression from informal sources, such as their friends, rather than seeking professional assistance. Therefore, the helping behaviours of those who provide informal help to these students need examination. This study examines the helping intentions of undergraduates in Sri Lanka towards their depressed peers and the correlates of their helping intentions.MethodThe undergraduates were presented with a vignette of a hypothetical depressed undergraduate. A total of 4442 undergraduates responded to an open-ended question about how the person in the vignette should be helped if this person was someone they knew well. Their responses were coded in reference to established mental health first aid guidelines. Logistic and linear regression models were used to examine the predictors of their helping intentions.ResultsThe undergraduates’ most common helping intentions were to listen/talk and support their peer. Only around a third considered the need for professional help. The overall quality of their helping intentions was poor, but better among those who recognised the problem as depression and those who had less stigmatising attitudes. There was some evidence that certain helping intentions of the undergraduates which were person-oriented or social network-related were better among females, those in higher years of study and among certain non-medical student groups. Intentions to encourage professional help were better among those who recognised the problem, but poorer among those with personal experiences of this problem and among those who perceived this problem to be a weakness and not a sickness.ConclusionsAlthough the undergraduates may attempt to support their distressed peers, they may not show appropriate helping actions and may not encourage the use of professional assistance. Hence, they need to be educated on how best to respond to their distressed peers. Those with higher levels of stigma and inability to recognise the problem may be at greater risk of showing poorer helping responses towards their distressed peers.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12888-017-1192-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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“…When certain illness symptoms (e.g. depression) and help-seeking are stigmatized by peers, this may inhibit students from seeking treatment (Vidourek, King, Nabors, & Merianos, 2014) or confiding in friends/peers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-regulation for the promotion of student health. Traffic lights: the development of a tailored web-based instrument providing immediate personalized feedback

Heijde

Vonk

Meijman³

2015

Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine

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Background and objective: University students report more health complaints and a poorer quality of life than their working peers. The majority of these students do not seek contact with health professionals. Health problems result not only from risk behaviors (e.g. drugs use) but also from various stress-related factors, necessitating the investigation of several factors of students' lives. The Internet provides a suitable environment for developing an accessible screening and self-regulation instrument for student health promotion. Design and methods: A web questionnaire was created that included reliable measurement scales (e.g. health, health (risk) behavior, quality of life, satisfaction with study), calculation modules with cut-off points and personalized feedback. The instrument included traffic lights, personal scores for comparison with peer scores, advice and referral. The validity, reliability, feasibility and effectiveness of the instrument were demonstrated using three studies (n = 334; n = 267; n = 4009). Results: The hypothesized research model, including the direct and indirect effects of the self-regulation of health via quality of life and health (risk) behaviors was an appropriate fit to the data (Structural Equation Modeling), explaining a substantial amount of variance (67%) and thus demonstrating predictive validity. Students reported intentions to change their behavior, actual behavioral changes and quality of life improvements up to a year after initially participating in a study. Conclusions: This instrument: (1) detects health complaints at an individual level and group level (e.g. study program); (2) encourages students to change their health (risk) behavior via personalized feedback; (3) provides students with a fairly complete and elaborate overview of their health-related quality of life and (4) is the first instrument providing a very high level of tailoring. Self-regulation (both self-assessment and personalized feedback) can fulfill an important role in addressing health problems and risks at an early stage and without the immediate need for professional intervention.

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College students' perceived confidence in mental health help-seeking

Cited by 14 publications

References 17 publications

‘teen Mental Health First Aid’: a description of the program and an initial evaluation

‘teen Mental Health First Aid’: a description of the program and an initial evaluation

Helping intentions of undergraduates towards their depressed peers: a cross-sectional study in Sri Lanka

Self-regulation for the promotion of student health. Traffic lights: the development of a tailored web-based instrument providing immediate personalized feedback

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