Improving Mental Health Literacy among Young Adults: A Pretest Post-test Study

Description

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19484192

Lijiya Manju and Rinju George (Department of Psychology, Institute/Organization: Providence Women’s College (Autonomous), Kozhikode, Calicut, Kerala)

Mental health is one of the most important determinants of our health and well-being. It is a state of mind in which we recognise our abilities, strengths and weaknesses and use them wisely to deal with various life stressors and lead a productive and functional life, contributing to self as well as the community. Mental health literacy (MHLs) enables us to create knowledge and understanding of mental health and well-being practices, and also about recognising and addressing mental distress and mental ill-health. The aim of this study is to find out the level of mental health literacy among college students. For the same reason, a total of 22 students from different disciplines were selected for the study. A pre-test post-test experimental design was used for the study. ‘t’ test was computed to analyze the data collected using Mental Health Literacy Questionnaire (Raghavan et al., 2023). The result shows there is no significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores on Mental Health Literacy. However, when comparing the mean score, the post-test showed a higher mean score than pre-test, suggesting that the training may have had a positive influence on mental health literacy. Therefore, it can be inferred that long-term training will have a significant impact on the mental health literacy of young adults.