Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Sep 22, 2020
Date Accepted: Mar 31, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Understanding the Role of Social Media Based Mental Health Support among College Students
ABSTRACT
Background:
Mental illness is a growing concern on many college campuses. Limited access to therapy resources, along with the fear of stigma often prevents students from seeking help. Introducing supportive interventions, coping strategies and mitigation programs might decrease the negative effects of mental illness in college students.
Objective:
Today, many college students are finding social support around a variety of their needs through social media platforms. With the pervasive adoption of social media sites in college populations, in this paper, we examine whether and how these platforms may help meet college students’ mental health needs.
Methods:
We first conducted a survey (N = 201) in a large public university located in the southeast of the United mental health needs. Next we conducted semi-structured interviews (N = 12) with students who identify to be States, in order to identify if, to what extent, and how students are appropriating social media platforms to suit their struggling with mental health concerns. The interviews were meant to provide comprehensive information on the benefits and limitations of social media as platforms of mental health support to college students.
Results:
Our survey revealed that a large number (70%) of participating students had recently experienced some form of stress, anxiety or another mental health challenge related to college life. Half of them (51%) also reported having appropriated some social media platform for self-disclosure or help, indicating the pervasiveness of this practice. Through our interviews, we obtained deeper insights into these initial observations. We identified specific academic, personal and social life stressors, motivations behind social media use for mental health needs and specific platform affordances that helped or hindered this use.
Conclusions:
Students recognized the benefit of social media in helping connect with peers on campus, and for promoting informal and candid disclosures. However, they argued against complete anonymity in platforms for mental health help, and advocated the need for privacy and boundary regulation mechanisms in social media platforms sup- porting this use. Our findings bear implications for informing campus counseling efforts, and in designing social media based mental health support tools for college students.
Citation
