Mental health literacy among secondary school learners in Tshwane region 1: A quantitative study.

IF 1 4区医学 Q4 PSYCHIATRY

South African Journal of Psychiatry Pub Date : 2025-04-10 eCollection Date: 2025-01-01 DOI:10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v31i0.2349

Dumisile P Madlala, Pierre Joubert, Oratilwe P Mokoena

{"title":"Mental health literacy among secondary school learners in Tshwane region 1: A quantitative study.","authors":"Dumisile P Madlala, Pierre Joubert, Oratilwe P Mokoena","doi":"10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v31i0.2349","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Background: Mental health literacy (MHL) is one of the crucial factors in the prevention and maintenance of youth mental health. Despite this fact, there is limited research on MHL in this age group.Aim: To determine the MHL in a sample of secondary schoolgoing learners.Setting: Five schools in Tshwane, South Africa.Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional study was done. Three fictive vignettes depicting individuals having symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD), substance-induced psychotic disorder (SIPD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) were presented to participants. The ability to recognise the disorder, knowledge of the best form of help to address the symptoms, and the ability to provide psychological first aid support were assessed. A comparison of MHL between township school learners and urban school learners was conducted. The association between MHL and demographic factors was also assessed.Results: The ability to recognise symptoms and connect them to a particular disorder was high (80.71% for MDD, 61.96% for SIPD and 67.91% for SAD). Correct knowledge on who would best address the symptoms was 52.55% for MDD, 63.83% for SIPD and 23.86% for SAD with a sizable number choosing informal help for the cases of MDD and SAD. There was good psychological first aid knowledge for both MDD and SIPD cases but poor for SAD case.Conclusion: Even though the results are promising regarding the recognition of all three disorders, there is still room for improving MHL in this group, especially in the areas of help-seeking and knowledge about anxiety disorders in general.Contribution: The findings highlight key areas of focus during mental health awareness campaigns to learners.","PeriodicalId":51156,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of Psychiatry","volume":"31 ","pages":"2349"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12067627/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"South African Journal of Psychiatry","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v31i0.2349","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"PSYCHIATRY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background: Mental health literacy (MHL) is one of the crucial factors in the prevention and maintenance of youth mental health. Despite this fact, there is limited research on MHL in this age group.

Aim: To determine the MHL in a sample of secondary schoolgoing learners.

Setting: Five schools in Tshwane, South Africa.

Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional study was done. Three fictive vignettes depicting individuals having symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD), substance-induced psychotic disorder (SIPD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) were presented to participants. The ability to recognise the disorder, knowledge of the best form of help to address the symptoms, and the ability to provide psychological first aid support were assessed. A comparison of MHL between township school learners and urban school learners was conducted. The association between MHL and demographic factors was also assessed.

Results: The ability to recognise symptoms and connect them to a particular disorder was high (80.71% for MDD, 61.96% for SIPD and 67.91% for SAD). Correct knowledge on who would best address the symptoms was 52.55% for MDD, 63.83% for SIPD and 23.86% for SAD with a sizable number choosing informal help for the cases of MDD and SAD. There was good psychological first aid knowledge for both MDD and SIPD cases but poor for SAD case.

Conclusion: Even though the results are promising regarding the recognition of all three disorders, there is still room for improving MHL in this group, especially in the areas of help-seeking and knowledge about anxiety disorders in general.

Contribution: The findings highlight key areas of focus during mental health awareness campaigns to learners.

查看原文本刊更多论文

茨瓦内地区中学生心理健康素养的定量研究

背景：心理健康素养（MHL）是青少年心理健康预防和维护的关键因素之一。尽管如此，对这一年龄组MHL的研究仍然有限。目的：测定中学在校生的MHL水平。环境：南非Tshwane的五所学校。方法：采用定量横断面研究。三个虚构的小插曲描述了有重度抑郁症（MDD）、物质诱发精神障碍（SIPD）和社交焦虑症（SAD）症状的个体被呈现给参与者。评估了识别障碍的能力、解决症状的最佳帮助形式的知识以及提供心理急救支持的能力。对乡镇学校学习者和城市学校学习者的MHL进行了比较。还评估了MHL与人口因素之间的关系。结果：识别症状并将其与特定疾病联系起来的能力很高（MDD为80.71%，SIPD为61.96%，SAD为67.91%）。对于谁能最好地解决症状的正确知识，MDD为52.55%，SIPD为63.83%，SAD为23.86%，相当多的MDD和SAD患者选择非正式帮助。MDD和SIPD患者的心理急救知识较好，而SAD患者的心理急救知识较差。结论：尽管这一结果对所有三种障碍的识别都很有希望，但在这一群体中，MHL仍有改进的空间，特别是在寻求帮助和对焦虑障碍的总体认识方面。贡献：研究结果突出了心理健康意识运动对学习者的重点领域。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

South African Journal of Psychiatry 医学-精神病学

CiteScore

1.60

自引率

10.00%

发文量

审稿时长

>12 weeks

期刊介绍： The journal is the leading psychiatric journal of Africa. It provides open-access scholarly reading for psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and all with an interest in mental health. It carries empirical and conceptual research articles, reviews, editorials, and scientific letters related to psychiatry. It publishes work from various places in the world, and makes special provision for the interests of Africa. It seeks to serve its readership and researchers with the most topical content in psychiatry for clinical practice and academic pursuits, including work in the subspecialty areas of psychiatry.