Purpose of the study We examined associations between gender and components of Mental Health Literacy (MHL). The baseline assumption, based on prior literature, is that women will have a higher knowledge related to mental health compared to men.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/fsrs2021/1079/thumbnail.jp

Clay, Nathan

English

DigitalCommons@USU

Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU Fall Student Research Symposium 2021 Fall Student Research Symposium 12-9-2021 Mental Health Literacy and the Impact of Gender Nathan Clay Utah State University, nathanclay8@gmail.com Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/fsrs2021  Part of the Accounting Commons Recommended Citation Clay, Nathan, "Mental Health Literacy and the Impact of Gender" (2021). Fall Student Research Symposium 2021. 80. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/fsrs2021/80 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Fall Student Research Symposium at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fall Student Research Symposium 2021 by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@usu.edu. Mental Health Literacy and the Impact of Gender Authors: Nathan Clay; Jacob Gossner; Elizabeth Fauth; Ty Aller; & Raechel RussoIntroductionRecent studies have placed an ever-increasing emphasis on the Mental Health Literacy of individuals and the implications in society (Cotton et al., 2006). This shift in evaluating an individual’s comprehensive knowledge of MHL has mainly been studied using a vignette methodology (Aldersey et al., 2015).Dr. Aller has used a different approach in breaking down MHL into three components that all contribute to mental health literacy:Knowledge, Self-Efficacy, and Behavior. This is based on the health belief model and social cognitive theory (Aller et al., 2021)• Knowledge: is an individual’s knowledge of identifying, locating resources for, and responding to mental health situations.• Self-Efficacy: is a comprehensive term for an individual's belief in their ability or capacity to succeed in a given situation. • Behavior: in this context, is the specific actions an individual takes to respond to mental health situations.  Methods• Data was collected by Dr. Aller and his team through MTURK • The sample was college students across the U.S. (female N=183; male N=268; transgender female N=1; Gender questioning N=1)• Possible gender responses included:• Female, transgender female, male, transgender male, gender questioning, two-spirit, and other• We analyzed male and female responders because there were so few participants with other gender identities   • We ran t-tests and correlations using gender on Knowledge, Self-Efficacy, and Behavior.Results• t-tests: Women had statistically higher scores then men at the p<.01 level in Knowledge; There was no significant gender difference in mean self-efficacy or mean behavior. • Correlations: There was no significant correlation between women’s MHL knowledge and MHL self-efficacy and behavior, but in men, higher MHL Knowledge was associated with lower MHL Self-efficacy and lower MHL Behaviors.  • Self-efficacy was correlated with behavior in both men and women, but the relationship was stronger in men: people with higher MHL Self-efficacy had higher MHL Behaviors  . Quickly explain what the figures show.​Purpose of the studyWe examined associations between gender and components of Mental Health Literacy (MHL). The baseline assumption, based on prior literature, is that women will have a higher knowledge related to mental health compared to men. AcknowledgmentsI would first like to thank Jacob who was has been so gracious as to donate so much of his time helping me learn and grow this semester in the skills of qualitative research. Second, I would like to thank Dr. Fauth and Dr. Aller for allowing me to work under them and to use their research data/expertise’s without which this poster would not be possible.  ReferencesAller, Ty B., et al. “Mental Health Awareness and Advocacy (MHAA) for Youth: An Evaluation of a College-Based Mental Health Literacy Curriculum.” Mental Health & Prevention, Elsevier, 23 May 2021, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212657021000088?via%3Dihub. Aldersey, Heather. “A Systematic Examination of the Nature and Content of Vignettes in Schizophrenia Research.” Journal of Mental Health (Abingdon, England), U.S. National Library of Medicine, June 2016, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26439609/. Furnham, Adrian, et al. “Knowledge of Mental Illnesses: Two Studies Using a New Test.” Psychiatry Research, Elsevier, 5 Aug. 2016, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178116300610. Haavik , L, and Joe Hatloy. “Help Seeking for Mental Health Problems in an Adolescent Population: The Effect of Gender.” Taylor & Francis, July 2017, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/09638237.2017.1340630. Hadjimina, Eleana, and Adrian Furnham. “Influence of Age and Gender on Mental Health Literacy of Anxiety Disorders.” Psychiatry Research, Elsevier, 1 Feb. 2017, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517811630854X. Lee, Eun, et al. “Age Differences in Health Literacy: Do Younger Korean Adults Have a Higher Level of Health Literacy than OlderKorean Adults?” Health & Social Work, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Aug. 2017, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28859424/. Sue M. Cotton, Annemarie Wright. “Influence of Gender on Mental Health Literacy in Young Australians - Sue M. Cotton, Annemarie Wright, Meredith G. Harris, Anthony F. Jorm, Patrick D. Mcgorry, 2006.” SAGE Journals, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1080/j.1440-1614.2006.01885.x. Mental Health Literacy (MHL) by GenderDiscussion and Implications • In men and women, our results highlight the relationship between mental health self-efficacy and mental health responding behaviors. • This supports that building self-efficacy in mental health literacy may foster  behavior change, although our findings were not causal, just correlational.  • A peculiar finding was that knowledge showed no significant relationship with self-efficacy or behavior in women, but showed a negative relationship with self-efficacy/behavior in men, though not in the expected direction. • Most studies of mental health literacy rely only on Knowledge of mental health issues. • These analyses show that self-efficacy may be more important when trying to target responding behaviors• Follow up research should be considered to see if such relationships hold in the general population, outside of college studentsMean SDMHL Knowledge Male 8.45 3.37Female 9.45 4.21MHL Self-Efficacy Male 69.63 20.4Female 70.33 18.61MHL Behavior Male 24.97 17.42Female 26.01 15.86

Mental Health Literacy and the Impact of Gender

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Mental Health Literacy and the Impact of Gender

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