Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Oct 14, 2020
Date Accepted: Apr 12, 2021
Promoting mental health of university students in Jinan, Shandong, China: Protocols for contextual assessment to inform intervention design and adaptation
ABSTRACT
Background:
Chinese students experience increased vulnerability to mental illness. Stigma associated with mental illness presents a barrier to service seeking.
Objective:
The Linking Hearts (LH) – Linking Youth and ‘Xin’ (hearts) project is an implementation science project that seeks to reduce mental illness stigma and promote mental health in university students in Jinan, China. In this paper, we outline protocols for the contextual assessment of mental health needs as a first step to adapting the evidence-informed approaches in order to engage in the implementation of our project in Jinan, China.
Methods:
Six local universities will participate in this project. A total of 100 students from each university will first complete self-report surveys on background information and assessments of depression, anxiety, stress, mental health knowledge, and mental health stigma. A smaller number of participants (n = 144 students, n = 144 service providers) will also be engaged in focus groups. Mental health resources will be collected, analyzed, and visualized with Social Network Analysis using EgoNet. Qualitative data will be transcribed verbatim and N-Vivo will be used for data management.
Results:
This Canada-China implementation project and its study protocols have been approved by the research ethics boards of all participating institutions in Canada and China. Canadian institutions include Ryerson University (REB2018-455), University of Toronto (RIS37724), university of Alberta (Pro00089364), and York University (e2019-162). As of September 2020, we have conducted a contextual assessment of mental health needs.
Conclusions:
The results of the contextual assessment will be adapted into the implementation of the mental health intervention program to meet the needs of Chinese university students in Jinan.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.