ERIC Number: EJ1393486
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023-May
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-1918-2902
Available Date: N/A
It's Time to Bring Mental Health Literacy Education into the Postsecondary Curriculum
Zaza, Christine; Yeung, Ryan C.
Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, v14 n1 Article 18 May 2023
In the last twenty years, research on post-secondary students' mental health and well-being has grown substantially, with a dramatic increase in publications over the past decade. Likewise, concerns about declining mental health on our campuses have risen; the mental well-being of postsecondary students is now widely recognized as a major public health issue. Over the last two decades, Canadian higher education has largely addressed these concerns by promoting mental health "awareness" through extracurricular means. Critically, a new movement towards mental health "literacy" has emerged across the nation: not just supplementary outreach, but education embedded into the curriculum. To put recommendations into practice, in 2020, one of the authors [CZ] developed and taught an undergraduate course on mental health literacy with a class of 106 students. In the first offering, we conducted a pre-post study to examine if this new course would be associated with changes in mental health knowledge, stigma, and help-seeking. Of the forty students who participated in the study, ten completed measures at both the start (T1) and the end of the course (T2). Within-subjects analyses showed that students made significant gains from T1 to T2, with a large effect size, in terms of attitudes toward seeking mental health services. Feedback on the course was very positive, both in students' ratings and their comments. Looking ahead, student well-being will depend on how institutions approach and engage with mental health literacy. We recommend firmly integrating mental health literacy education into the post-secondary curriculum.
Descriptors: Mental Health, Foreign Countries, Higher Education, College Students, Well Being, Undergraduate Students, Knowledge Level, Social Bias, Help Seeking, Program Effectiveness, Student Attitudes, Health Behavior
University of Western Ontario and Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Mills Memorial Library Room 504, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L6, Canada. Tel: 905-525-9140; e-mail: info@cjsotl-rcacea.ca; Web site: http://www.cjsotl-rcacea.ca/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Postsecondary Education; Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Positive and Negative Affect Schedule
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A