Mind the gap: Person-centred delivery of mental health information to post-secondary students

Abstract

Mental illnesses are rapidly escalating on university and college campuses. It is well known that postsecondary institutions are not doing enough to address mental health concerns: this represents a significant gap in our attempts to meet the mental health needs of young people. Deficits in mental health knowledge are now proposed as a major contributing factor to both stigma and low service access, but little research has explored this issue. There is also little research to date concerning what young people want to know about mental health and how best to disseminate mental health knowledge. Without such information, knowledge may not be shared in a person-centred, meaningful manner that youth will use. We explored these issues in the present study. First year postsecondary students (N = 271; n = 183 females; n = 85 males; n = 3 other) from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada participated in the online survey. Almost half of the postsecondary youth participants, particularly males, had difficulty recognizing common mental illnesses, such as anxiety, eating disorders, and psychosis. Youth held inaccurate beliefs and stigma, as well as attitudes not in favour of help-seeking. They primarily wanted to know about symptoms of mental illnesses as well as how to cope with stress. Post-secondary students wanted to learn about mental health issues through public presentations, the Internet, and media. The present research suggests the need for an awareness and acknowledgement among policy-makers of first year post-secondary students' knowledge gaps and youthappropriate knowledge sharing. Assessing mental health knowledge, what post-secondary students want to know about mental health, and knowledge transfer preferences could aid in the development of a framework to address the significant gap in the mental health needs of post-secondary students in a personcentred manner.

An Experimental Investigation into Promoting Mental Health Service Use on Social Media: Effects of Source and Comments

“…Perceptions of mental health issues may also be influenced by comments shared on social media. A key deterrent to seeking treatment for mental health issues is negative perception [6,12], which may stem in part from negative social commentary [13,14]. However, the additivity hypothesis [15] posits that comments that are consistent with a message could boost its persuasive effects, indicating that comments that support using mental health services could reinforce the message.…”

Emotional Intelligence Programs in Education System

“…Mental illness and stress among college students is at an all-time record high with 47% of students reporting symptoms of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and psychotic symptoms; these symptoms have doubled or tripled since the mid-1990s [4]. With 75% of diagnosable mental illnesses being established between the ages of 15-24 this is a crucial time to provide services and support, however, many go undiagnosed or untreated (Occupational health & wellbeing, 2017).…”

“…With 75% of diagnosable mental illnesses being established between the ages of 15-24 this is a crucial time to provide services and support, however, many go undiagnosed or untreated (Occupational health & wellbeing, 2017). This highlights a significant gap in meeting the needs of students and it is well-known that post-secondary institutions are not doing enough to address and support mental health concerns [4].…”

Student Mental Wellbeing Interventions with a Second-Year Engineering Cohort

“…In recent research, post-secondary students at a Canadian institution reported negative attitudes towards help-seeking, but had interest in learning about symptoms and coping strategies [7]. Additional Canadian research has shown that mental health literacy programming is context dependent [8] and that there is value in embedding content in regular classes, delivered by the regular teacher [9].…”