Mental Health First Aid for College Students

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Depression, Anxiety, Suicidal Ideation, Eating Disorders

In brief

Most college students with mental disorders do not receive treatment, and over 80% of those who die by suicide have never made contact with campus mental health services. Knowledge, stigma, and other health beliefs represent significant barriers to help-seeking for many of these students. However, there have been no large-scale intervention studies for reducing these barriers to mental health treatment on college campuses. This project will fill this gap by determining whether a community mental health education program, Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), is an effective method to increase number of students who seek mental health services on college campuses. MHFA is an international, 12-hour training program that has been shown to increase knowledge of mental illnesses and their treatments, decrease stigma, and increase helping behaviors in community members. However, it has not been tested in a college setting in the United States. To determine the effectiveness of MHFA in US colleges, the proposed project will involve a randomized control trial of the MHFA training program on 32 campuses representing a range of higher education institutions, from community colleges in rural areas to research universities in large, urban areas. The MHFA training program will be administered to peer supports such as residential advisors. Administrative data from campus mental health services and pre- and post-intervention surveys will be used to collect outcome data on service utilization, knowledge, attitudes, and other measures. Data analyses will focus on identifying changes in students' behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes toward mental illnesses that can be attributed to the MHFA training. In addition to testing a novel and timely mental health intervention for college students, this project will result in improved data collection measures for college populations, and will lay the foundation for stronger connections and future collaborations between diverse campus communities. If the MHFA program is successful in reducing stigma and increasing general on-campus awareness and early treatment of emerging mental health problems, then it may provide a cost-effective means for enabling more students to seek early treatments for developing mental health problems.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT02021344

Run by

University of Michigan

People needed

2543

Starts

2009-09-01

Expected to finish

2011-05-01

Last updated by the study team

2013-12-27

Who can join

Age: 18 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Student enrolled in a participating campus as a full-time, residential undergraduate during the 2009-2010 or 2010-2011 academic years. Student must have been living in a participating residence hall.

You may not qualify if…

• Students under 18 years of age.

Where it is running

• University of Michigan — Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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