Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Nov 7, 2020
Date Accepted: May 12, 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Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Study Protocol: Mental Health Promotion and Stigma Reduction Among University Students in Jinan, Shandong, China using the RE-AIM Framework
ABSTRACT
Background:
Rapid urbanization, academic pressures, and developmental life transition stressors all contribute to mental health stress for postsecondary students in China. Effective prevention, early identification, and timely intervention are challenged by stigma, lack of mental health literacy, and inadequate mental health resources.
Objective:
Our implementation science (IS) research project is aimed at evaluating the use of an evidence-informed mental health promotion intervention, Acceptance and Commitment to Empowerment – Linking Youth and ‘Xin’ (hearts) (ACE-LYNX), to promote university student mental health in Jinan, China.
Methods:
We will engage and collaborate with the provincial mental health center, Shandong Mental Health Center, and six local universities in different regions of Jinan. The ACE-LYNX intervention aims to reduce social stigma against mental illness, enhance mental health literacy, and improve access to quality mental health care by increasing interdisciplinary collaboration and forming a mental health network. It is based on two evidence-based approaches, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Group Empowerment Psychoeducation (GEP), and it will be delivered through online learning and in-person group training.
Results:
The project will train 90 interdisciplinary professionals using the model. They will in turn train 15 professionals and 20 students at each university. The project will adopt the RE-AIM framework, which provides a structure to examine the process and outcomes of implementation using mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative approaches along five dimensions: Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance.
Conclusions:
Over the course of the project, 720 champions will be directly trained. They will contribute to developing a formal and informal mental health network, strengthened by student-led mental health initiatives and professional-led initiatives to promote collaborative care and facilitated care pathways. We anticipate that our project will reach 11,000 to 18,000 students. This implementation science protocol will outline our unique intervention model and key steps to contextualize, implement, and evaluate the community-based mental health intervention.
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