Open AccessThe Impact of Transitions, a Mental Health Literacy Intervention With Embedded Life Skills for Postsecondary Students: Preliminary Findings From a Naturalistic Cohort Study
Author(s) -
Yifeng Wei,
Stan Kutcher,
Erin L. Austen,
Anne Comfort,
Chris Gilham,
Christiana MacDougall,
Gregory B. McKenna,
Margaret C. McKin,
Kara Thompson,
Elizabeth Yeo,
Michael Zhang,
Anthony D. Baxter,
Kara Matheson
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the canadian journal of psychiatry/canadian journal of psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.68
H-Index - 117
eISSN - 1497-0015
pISSN - 0706-7437
DOI - 10.1177/07067437211037131
Subject(s) - mental health literacy , mental health , intervention (counseling) , cohort , psychology , stigma (botany) , young adult , mental illness , clinical psychology , psychiatry , medicine , gerontology
Objective Mental illness is a common medical condition to onset during adolescence. Young people who leave for postsecondary life are at an especially challenging period of lifetime when many will leave home and familiar environments for prolonged periods of time. These new circumstances may put young people at risk of developing mental health problems or disorders or exacerbate existing mental disorders. Alternatively, some young people may misinterpret the normal negative emotional states occurring as a result of these new challenges as a mental disorder requiring professional intervention. We conducted a quasiexperimental cohort study to investigate the effectiveness of a mental health literacy intervention Transitions with blended life skills to address these challenges for first-year postsecondary students.Methods Students ( n = 2,397) from five Canadian postsecondary institutions were assigned to the intervention or the control group and were administered a survey at baseline, postintervention, and at 2-month follow-up (September 2017 to February 2018). We applied generalized linear mixed effects (PROC Mixed procedure) to test the between-group difference in the post—pre/follow-up—pre and to determine the predicted least-square mean values.Results The findings showed that students who were exposed to the Transitions intervention significantly improved their mental health knowledge, decreased stigma against mental illness, improved help-seeking attitudes and behaviours, and decreased perceived stress when compared to students who had not been exposed to the intervention. However, we did not identify significant changes in general health. This may be due to the relatively short follow-up time (2 months) to determine participants’ general health status.Conclusions Transitions delivered to first-year postsecondary students may be a beneficial intervention to help young people adjust to their new postsecondary life and improve their mental health.