Effectiveness of a Brief Digitized Contact-Based Intervention in Improving Mental Health Stigma and Help-Seeking in Young Adults: Mixed Methods Study

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Abstract
Background: Contact-based interventions, where individuals share their lived experiences of mental health difficulties and recovery, appear effective in reducing stigma. Objective: This study examined the effectiveness of a brief digitized contact-based intervention in reducing mental health stigma and improving help-seeking intentions in young adults. The study also sought a deeper understanding of the perspectives of young adults toward the contact-based intervention. Methods: A mixed methods study, using quantitative and qualitative analyses, examined mental health public stigma, self-stigma, and help-seeking attitudes in undergraduate psychology students (N=328) before, immediately after, and 1 week following the contact-based intervention, compared to an active control. The intervention comprised a brief video (8 min) of a mental health consumer sharing their lived experience of mental health difficulties and their recovery. Participants were invited to participate in a subsequent semistructured interview (n=12) that further explored their perspectives on the contact-based intervention. Results: Relative to control participants, those in the intervention group reported small improvements in mental health public stigma and help-seeking intentions using formal sources of help; however, this was not maintained at 1-week follow-up. There was limited evidence that the intervention improved self-stigma or help-seeking intentions using informal sources of help. Improvements in self-stigma were not evident following the intervention, but were observed 1 week later. Additional exploratory analyses showed that participants with high mental distress were more likely to provide negative evaluations of the intervention in terms of the helpfulness of the videos, relatability to the speaker, and showed a decrease in their desire to seek help from friends and family following the videos, compared to those with low mental health distress. Conclusions: Although this brief digitized contact-based intervention holds promise as an easily disseminated strategy for young adults to reduce mental health public stigma and improve formal help-seeking intentions, these effects show that overall improvements in public stigma and formal help-seeking intentions were short-lived. Furthermore, the potential negative impact of the intervention on informal help-seeking intentions in those with high mental health distress suggests a need to tailor interventions for young adults with high levels of anxiety or depression. The study has important implications for designing brief contact-based interventions and what young adults would benefit from the most over time.

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