An Experimental Study on the Effectiveness of Individualized Online Intervention for Mental Health Literacy of Community Residents

Background: Understanding how to improve mental health literacy is conducive to maintaining and promoting individuals' mental health and well-being. However, to date, interventions for mental health literacy primarily depend on traditional education and contact interventions, which have limitations with regard to pertinence and individualization. Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data technology have influenced mental health services to be more intellectual and digital, and they also provide greater technical convenience for individualized interventions for promoting mental health literacy. However, there is relatively little research on the effectiveness of individualized online intervention for mental health literacy in the literature. This study aims to fill this void. To verify whether individualized online intervention can improve the level of mental health literacy. Methods: We conducted a pretest-post-test control experiment. The participants were recruited from a large community located in central China. A total of 152 participants completed the research. We use mixed linear model estimation and paired t-tests to analyze the data. Results: Individualized online intervention can effectively improve the mental health literacy level of participants. Specifically, we found that compared with the control group, the mental health literacy in the experimental group was significantly improved after receiving individualized online intervention. Likewise, the mental health literacy of the control group has also improved after receiving individualized online intervention. In addition, we compared the mental health literacy level of the experimental group at Time 3 to those at Time 2 and found that the mental health literacy level at Time 3 had not decreased one month later. This shows that individualized online intervention was not only momentarily effective, but also had long-term efficacy. Conclusion: This study illustrates that the individualized online intervention has both great momentary and long-term effectiveness in improving community residents' mental health literacy.