Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2002 Oct 1:2:10.
doi: 10.1186/1471-244x-2-10.

Mental health first aid training for the public: evaluation of effects on knowledge, attitudes and helping behavior

Betty A Kitchener  1 , Anthony F Jorm
Affiliations

Mental health first aid training for the public: evaluation of effects on knowledge, attitudes and helping behavior

Betty A Kitchener et al. BMC Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Background: Many members of the public have poor mental health literacy. A Mental Health First Aid training course was developed in order to improve this. This paper describes the training course and reports an evaluation study looking at changes in knowledge, stigmatizing attitudes and help provided to others.

Methods: Data are reported on the first 210 participants in public courses. Evaluation questionnaires were given at the beginning of courses, at the end and at 6 months follow-up. Data were analyzed using an intention-to-treat approach.

Results: The course improved participants' ability to recognize a mental disorder in a vignette, changed beliefs about treatment to be more like those of health professionals, decreased social distance from people with mental disorders, increased confidence in providing help to someone with a mental disorder, and increased the amount of help provided to others.

Conclusions: Mental Health First Aid training appears to be an effective method of improving mental health literacy which can be widely applied.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Steps in providing mental health first aid
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Andrews G, Henderson S, Hall W. Prevalence, comorbidity, disability and service utilisation. Overview of the Australian National Mental Health Survey. Br J Psychiatry. 2000;178:145–53. doi: 10.1192/bjp.178.2.145. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Jenkins R, Lewis G, Bebbington P, Brugha T, Farrell M, Gill B, Meltzer H. The National Psychiatric Morbidity surveys of Great Britain – initial findings from the household survey. Psychol Med. 1997;27:775–789. doi: 10.1017/S0033291797005308. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Jorm AF. Mental health literacy: public knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders. Br J Psychiatry. 2000;177:396–401. doi: 10.1192/bjp.177.5.396. - DOI - PubMed
    1. McNair BG, Highet NJ, Hickie IB, Davenport TA. Exploring the perspectives of people whose lives have been affected by depression. Med J Aust. 2002;176:S69–S76. - PubMed
    1. Kitchener BA, Jorm AF. Mental Health First Aid Manual. Canberra: Centre for Mental Health Research. 2002.

Publication types