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Improving Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Male University Students: A Series of Gender-Sensitive Mental Health Feasibility Interventions

One-third of students experience a mental health condition associated with decreased academic functioning and increased risk of dropping out. While mental health difficulties are lower among male students, they are twice as likely to die by suicide. Although the importance of gender-sensitive interv...

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Autores principales: Sagar-Ouriaghli, Ilyas, Godfrey, Emma, Tailor, Vinay, Brown, June S. L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10262626/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37269097
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/15579883231163728
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author Sagar-Ouriaghli, Ilyas
Godfrey, Emma
Tailor, Vinay
Brown, June S. L.
author_facet Sagar-Ouriaghli, Ilyas
Godfrey, Emma
Tailor, Vinay
Brown, June S. L.
author_sort Sagar-Ouriaghli, Ilyas
collection PubMed
description One-third of students experience a mental health condition associated with decreased academic functioning and increased risk of dropping out. While mental health difficulties are lower among male students, they are twice as likely to die by suicide. Although the importance of gender-sensitive interventions for male students has been emphasized, feasible and effective approaches are unexplored. This investigation conducted three gender-sensitive feasibility interventions for male students to evaluate acceptability, changes to help-seeking and mental health outcomes. Three interventions were delivered to 24 male students. The interventions included the following: Intervention 1—a formal intervention targeting male students, Intervention 2—a formal intervention that adopted gender-sensitive language and promoted positive masculine traits, and Intervention 3—an informal drop-in offering a social space providing health information. These were evaluated for acceptability, attitudes to help-seeking, and mental health outcomes. All interventions were equally acceptable. The informal drop-in was more acceptable, having better engagement from male students who have greater conformity to maladaptive masculine traits, more negative attitudes to help-seeking, higher levels of self-stigma, who were less likely to have used mental health support before and belonged to an ethnic minority. These findings indicate differences in acceptability, particularly uptake, for hard-to-engage male students. Informal strategies help reach male students who would otherwise not engage with mental health support, familiarize them with help-seeking, and connect them with pre-existing mental health interventions. More work needs to be carried out using larger samples to investigate the efficacy of informal interventions to engage male students.
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spelling pubmed-102626262023-06-15 Improving Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Male University Students: A Series of Gender-Sensitive Mental Health Feasibility Interventions Sagar-Ouriaghli, Ilyas Godfrey, Emma Tailor, Vinay Brown, June S. L. Am J Mens Health Mental Health and Wellbeing One-third of students experience a mental health condition associated with decreased academic functioning and increased risk of dropping out. While mental health difficulties are lower among male students, they are twice as likely to die by suicide. Although the importance of gender-sensitive interventions for male students has been emphasized, feasible and effective approaches are unexplored. This investigation conducted three gender-sensitive feasibility interventions for male students to evaluate acceptability, changes to help-seeking and mental health outcomes. Three interventions were delivered to 24 male students. The interventions included the following: Intervention 1—a formal intervention targeting male students, Intervention 2—a formal intervention that adopted gender-sensitive language and promoted positive masculine traits, and Intervention 3—an informal drop-in offering a social space providing health information. These were evaluated for acceptability, attitudes to help-seeking, and mental health outcomes. All interventions were equally acceptable. The informal drop-in was more acceptable, having better engagement from male students who have greater conformity to maladaptive masculine traits, more negative attitudes to help-seeking, higher levels of self-stigma, who were less likely to have used mental health support before and belonged to an ethnic minority. These findings indicate differences in acceptability, particularly uptake, for hard-to-engage male students. Informal strategies help reach male students who would otherwise not engage with mental health support, familiarize them with help-seeking, and connect them with pre-existing mental health interventions. More work needs to be carried out using larger samples to investigate the efficacy of informal interventions to engage male students. SAGE Publications 2023-06-02 /pmc/articles/PMC10262626/ /pubmed/37269097 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/15579883231163728 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Mental Health and Wellbeing
Sagar-Ouriaghli, Ilyas
Godfrey, Emma
Tailor, Vinay
Brown, June S. L.
Improving Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Male University Students: A Series of Gender-Sensitive Mental Health Feasibility Interventions
title Improving Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Male University Students: A Series of Gender-Sensitive Mental Health Feasibility Interventions
title_full Improving Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Male University Students: A Series of Gender-Sensitive Mental Health Feasibility Interventions
title_fullStr Improving Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Male University Students: A Series of Gender-Sensitive Mental Health Feasibility Interventions
title_full_unstemmed Improving Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Male University Students: A Series of Gender-Sensitive Mental Health Feasibility Interventions
title_short Improving Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Male University Students: A Series of Gender-Sensitive Mental Health Feasibility Interventions
title_sort improving mental health help-seeking among male university students: a series of gender-sensitive mental health feasibility interventions
topic Mental Health and Wellbeing
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10262626/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37269097
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/15579883231163728
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