Beliefs, information sharing, and mental health care use among university students

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of beliefs and stigma in shaping students’ use of professional mental health services at a large private university in Mexico, where supply-side barriers are minimal and services are readily accessible. In a survey experiment with 680 students, we find that nearly 50% of students in distress do not receive professional mental health support despite a high level of awareness and perceived effectiveness, constituting a substantial treatment gap. We document stigmatized beliefs and misconceptions correlated with the treatment gap. As three-quarters of students incorrectly believe that those in distress perform worse academically and that the majority of students going to therapy are in severe distress, we implement an information intervention to correct these beliefs. We find that it increases students’ sharing of on-campus mental health resources with peers and encourages them to recommend these resources when advising a friend in distress. Interestingly, we find that it lowers respondents’ willingness to pay for private therapy at the end of the intervention. Yet, this effect does not translate into a long-run reduction in self-reported therapy use 6 months after the experiment, with prior therapy users showing increased off-campus take-up.