About This Project

How and where messages are delivered can be as important as the message itself. For messages about depression, how and where messages are delivered can be critical to whether or not the student seeks help. We hypothesize that when a mental health message is related to students' anxiety and is featured in a noisy environment, students will be more likely to process and absorb the message. We will test this hypothesis with 240 freshmen. Data and results will be shared openly with funders.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

44% of college students in the U.S. report symptoms of depression. While young adults aged 18-29 are more likely to suffer from depression than most other age groups, they are the most reluctant to seek professional psychiatric help, creating a significant barrier for early detection, often resulting in poor treatment outcomes. While depression symptoms are often transient and may be dismissed due to common stress, it is critical for colleges to provide well-designed and targeted psychiatric help-seeking information to raise awareness of depression, and encourage students to seek professional psychiatric health when necessary.

What is the significance of this project?

An improved understanding of the influence of environmental and psychological attributes may allow practitioners to design more effective physical environments for the delivery of health messages targeted at students. Also, an improved understanding of the effects of message content (i.e., anxiety-relatedness) suggests that communicators should consider the anxiety associated with a health issue when constructing health messages promoting help-seeking behaviors and/or construct messages that encourage students to seek appropriate help by considering the existing environmental condition (e.g., a low- versus high-noise space).

What are the goals of the project?

The study will be conducted from October 15, 2017 to May 15, 2018, in a simulated setting. Subjects will be asked to be seated in the simulated study area and will be told to complete a personality test which takes approximately 30 minutes. In this time, subjects will be exposed to the noise condition (students talking sound effect at 30 dB or 75 dB) and the message condition (poster featuring anxiety-unrelated/anxiety-related psychiatric help seeking information). No special measure will be used to direct subjects’ attention to the psychiatric help-seeking message. After 30 minutes, subjects will fill out a survey which assesses their general anxiety and psychiatric help-seeking intentions. Each study session will be approximately 45 minutes.