Year of Award

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Name

Clinical Psychology

Department or School/College

Department of Psychology

Committee Chair

Duncan Campbell

Commitee Members

Jacqueline Brown, Gregory Machek, Rachel Williamson, Jen Molloy

Keywords

College students, Help Seeking, Social Media, video interventions

Abstract

Despite evidence of rising mental health concerns among college students, treatment utilization among this population remains low (ACHA, 2020). While there are many barriers that impact help seeking among students, some of the most commonly cited include stigma, treatment fearfulness, and low mental health literacy (e.g., Czyz et al., 2013; Ebert et al., 2019b; Eisenberg et al., 2007, Vogel et al., 2013). In order to promote help seeking among students, many colleges have made efforts to address these barriers through outreach interventions, such as educational presentations, on-campus advertisements, and campus fairs (Betton et al., 2015; Gruttadaro, & Crudo, 2012; Pescosolido et al., 2020; Waqas et al., 2020). While these strategies improve help seeking among students, in-person and campus-based outreach efforts may not reach isolated students who are most in need and less likely to be active on campus. Thus, is it vital that future help seeking interventions employ novel ways to reach college students. Given the high rates of social media use among young adults (Pew Research Center, 2021), utilizing platforms like TikTok may be one way for colleges to promote treatment engagement and reach a larger proportion of students. In the present study, we created three brief social media videos addressing different barriers—stigma, treatment fears, and mental health literacy—and compared the impact of these videos on help seeking intentions to a neutral control video. We found that the videos were particularly effectively at promoting seeking intentions for students who had no prior history of mental health treatment (p<.001, pη2=.099), and among these treatment naïve individuals, the video addressing stigma was particularly impactful. Further, the results from a follow up survey revealed that the effects of the intervention on help seeking intention were maintained over one week. Individuals who watched the stigma video were also more likely to report engaging in treatment seeking behaviors since the intervention compared to the control group. Thus, the present study provides preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of brief social media videos at increasing help seeking intentions, and also suggests that videos targeting stigma may help to promote help seeking behaviors.

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© Copyright 2023 Jennifer Leigh Lippold