Can popular magazines educate people with depression? An investigation of articles' understandability, reliability, and actionability

OBJECTIVE: to evaluate articles on depression published in popular magazines with respect to understandability, reliability, and actionability. To determine whether these articles can educate patients. To investigate whether the Clear Communication Index (CCI), developed to assess the quality of patient education materials produced by the medical sector, can be used to evaluate articles published in popular magazines. METHODS: The sample consists of 81 articles from 24 different Flemish and Dutch popular magazines. The articles were evaluated using the CCI. Correlational and t-test analyses were performed on the data. RESULTS: No more than one-fifth of all articles were found to be of quality. Significant positive correlations were found between actionability, reliability, and understandability. No significant differences were found between health magazines and other more generally oriented magazines. CONCLUSION: Overall, our findings demonstrate the relative lack of power as patient educational materials of articles on depression published in popular magazines for people with low or average mental health literacy levels. INNOVATION: Using the Clear Communication Index, the quality of Dutch medium popular magazine articles on depression are analyzed. The study design allowed for the comparison of different types of magazines. Health magazines do no score better than generally-focused magazines.