JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, online stress management resources such as infographics and online workshops have been central in supporting university students’ mental health and well-being. However, there is a lack of research on students’ satisfaction with these approaches. Furthermore, mental health stigma has been suggested to influence student’s help-seeking behaviours and may impact their uptake of online resources.

Objective:

Thus, the present study compared potential differences in students’ satisfaction and strategy use with the infographic, an innovative emerging resource modality, and the online workshop, a more common and standard online modality. The present study further examined the relative contribution of students’ strategy use and family-based mental health stigma in predicting their sustained satisfaction with the two online stress management approaches.

Methods:

University students (N = 113; Mage = 20.93, SD = 1.53; 88.5% women) completed an online self-report measure of family-based mental health stigma at baseline and were randomly assigned either to the infographic group (n = 60) or the online workshop group (n = 53). All participants reported their satisfaction at post (T1) and follow-up (T2) and strategy use at T2.

Results:

Interestingly, a two-way mixed ANOVA revealed no significant interaction or main effect of group, however, despite their high satisfaction at both T1 and T2, there was a significant decrease in satisfaction from T1 to T2. In addition, a one-way ANOVA revealed no significant difference in strategy use between groups. Results from a hierarchical multiple regression revealed that students’ strategy use positively predicted T2 satisfaction in both groups. However, only in the online workshop group did family-based mental health stigma predict T2 satisfaction over and above strategy use.

Conclusions:

While both approaches demonstrated high satisfaction at T1 and T2, findings highlight the potential utility of interactive infographics since they are less resource-intensive than online workshops, and students’ satisfaction with them is not impacted by family-based mental health stigma.