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Publication Date

6-28-2024

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Presentation: 4:31

Poster attached as supplemental file below

Abstract

Mental health challenges are prevalent at college campuses in the United States by their students. However, not all of students seek out services at their college, that can then impair academic performance, may self-report poor well-being, and lead to low self-esteem due to a lack of support. Researchers believe that an underlying factor between poor mental health and help-seeking behavior, may be self-stigma. Therefore, research shows evidence that stigma reduction interventions are effective in reducing self-stigma for seeking help among the college student population. To our knowledge, there has been no scholarly review that synthesized literature about the effects of self-stigma reduction interventions among the undergraduate student population in the United States. Therefore, we aim to conduct a rapid systematic review to address this gap in the existing literature. Our team screened 151 articles, through databases, PubMed and Scopus, and eliminated 147, narrowing down a final count of 4. The results showed four stigma reduction interventions that were effective. The effective stigma reduction interventions were cognitive bias modification, psychoeducation, self-affirmation, and group therapy. This review can serve the purposes to inform efforts of early intervention at college campuses for the undergraduate student population to increase the utilization rate of mental health services. Also, this review can serve to address the mental health challenges that colleges are seeing among their students in the United States.

Lay Summary

Anyone can face mental health problems in their lives, especially college students. Students at four-year colleges are likely to have mental health stress. We found that the first four years of college, also known as undergraduate, to be of value to study, because most students fall in these years. Also, prevention should happen early in the college years. Undergraduate students have mental health problems that can create issues with studying and poor health. Their grades, friendships, and overall health may suffer, but trying to seek help can be difficult. Self-stigma is poor inner beliefs about oneself or their condition and can lead to not wanting to seek help. Undergraduate students can have self-stigma and avoid seeking help for their mental health problems. We tried to find ways to lower self-stigma that undergraduate students may have, so that they can seek help for their mental health problems. To do this, we searched for papers on PubMed and Scopus and found 151 papers. After reading parts of the 151 papers and got rid of some, our final amount came to 4 papers. All papers took place in the United States. We did find ways to lower self-stigma for undergraduate students in the papers. They were either by self-affirmations or an online program. We believe that self-stigma can be lowered for U.S. undergraduate students to help them seek support. These ways can help to support mental health for undergraduate students in helping them to seek help for their mental health problems.

Language

English

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