To tell or not to tell about your mental health problems? An intervention for students

Abstract

Worldwide, an increasing number of students in higher education have mental health problems. Talking about these problems at the university is often not that easy. Students fear to be stigmatised if they disclose their problems to others. However, if they do not disclose their problems, they may not get the support they often need. Existing interventions to help people with this disclosure-dilemma are not specifically aimed at students, and lack certain important aspects. Therefore, we developed an intervention to help students with making a personal, well-informed decision regarding whether or not to disclose their problems. We examined the experiences of students and professionals with the new intervention. Moreover, we studied whether the students were less concerned about disclosure and experienced less decisional conflicts after using the intervention. Students with mental health problems from three universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands completed questionnaires prior to the intervention, directly after and three months after. In addition, the educational professionals reported their experiences with applying the intervention. Both students and professionals appreciated the contents and structure of the intervention and students' level of concern about disclosure and level of decisional conflicts were lower after using the intervention.

Comparing the Mental Health of Healthcare Students: Mental Health Shame and Self-compassion in Counselling, Occupational Therapy, Nursing and Social Work Students

“…In addition to these negative emotions, shame towards mental health problems has diverse adverse effects on mental health. Mental health shame is often a barrier to seeking help or revealing their mental health issues to others, making their mental health problems worse and increasingly difficult to manage (Hofstra et al, 2021 ). University students in particular demonstrate a high level of mental health shame, believing that having a mental health problem will cause them to be excluded from the community (Gilbert et al, 2007 ; Hofstra et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Healthcare students have been experiencing higher levels of anxiety and depression since the outbreak of COVID-19 (Chandratre, 2020). The rates of healthcare students who suffer from mental health symptoms are high: depression (74.6%), insomnia (62.6%) and anxiety (62.3%) (Essangri et al, 2021;Hofstra et al, 2021). Online learning is difficult for healthcare students as their curriculum requires practical training, which can be stressful to be offered virtually (Nishimura et al, 2021;Suzuki et al, 2022).…”

“…Mental health shame is often a barrier to seeking help or revealing their mental health issues to others, making their mental health problems worse and increasingly difficult to manage (Hofstra et al, 2021). University students in particular demonstrate a high level of mental health shame, believing that having a mental health problem will cause them to be excluded from the community (Gilbert et al, 2007;Hofstra et al, 2021). Among university students, healthcare students demonstrated a high level of mental health shame as they are trained to offer care for others but not to ask for it (Kotera et al, 2021c).…”

The Experience of Disclosure and Concealment of One’s Mental Disorder

“…Svarbu paminėti ir tai, kad žmonės, turintys paslėptą stigmatizuojamą tapatybę, su šia dilema susiduria pakartotinai: informacijos atskleidimas nėra vienkartinis sprendimas, ar verta kalbėti ar nutylėti apie savo sutrikimą, o veikiau sudėtingas tęstinis procesas, apimantis pasirinkimą, ar pasidalinti informacija, taip pat laiką, aplinkybes bei žmones, su kuriais būtų kalbama (Hastuti & Timming, 2021). Sprendimo dilema gali lemti vidinį konfliktą (Hofstra et al, 2021), taip sukeldama papildomą streso išgyvenimą (Mulfinger et al, 2018) ir apsunkindama sutrikimo simptomų įveikos procesą (Peter & Jungbauer, 2019). Šiuo atveju sprendimo dilema jau savaime yra papildoma našta asmeniui, kuris šią dilemą sprendžia.…”

“…Literatūra rodo, kad darbovietė ir studijų, mokymosi įstaigos yra tos aplinkos, kur labiausiai baiminamasi galimos stigmatizuojančios reakcijos. Šiose įstaigose dažniausiai vertinama žmogaus veikla, tam tikri gebėjimai atlikti reikalingas funkcijas ir įvykdyti įsipareigojimus, tad atrodo natūralu, kad jose atsiskleisti gali būti sudėtingiau (Hofstra et al, 2021). Tad numatomos stigmatizacijos grėsmė gali tapti nutylėjimo priežastimi.…”