Impact of cognitive function-focused mental health promotion campaign for psychiatric help-seeking behavior in Japanese university students

Purpose: We developed a mental health promotion campaign program to promote psychiatrichelp-seeking behavior among university students by adopting a social marketing approach and nudge theory from behavioral economics. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the campaign. The campaign focused on the illustration of cognitive function- related symptoms and was called the “Fatigue of Brain” campaign. Methods: This study retrospectively compared the duration until psychiatric consultation at health care centers in a Japanese university between data obtained from our previous study (2016- 2018) with data from our newly developed mental health campaign (2018-2020). The campaign program included a small leaflet, given to all students during their physical examinations, which directed them to a special website. Results: The results of logistic regression analysis using data that met the eligibility and inclusion/exclusion criteria showed that the proportion of students (40.3%) who visited psychiatric consultations within two weeks of the campaign’s onset was significantly higher than the proportion of students visiting before the campaign (37.6%; OR = .578, 95% CI = .343 - .972, p = .039). Multivariate analysis revealed that the proportion of students with depressive symptoms (31.6%) was significantly higher during the campaign than before the campaign (17.3%; OR = .444, 95%CI = .234–.843, p = .013). Conclusions: The results suggest that our cognitive function-focused mental health campaign promotes earlier psychiatric consultation.