Mental health campaign shows promise among Los Angeles youth

Rebecca Collins

A community engagement campaign that encourages youth to engage with mental health issues and to break down barriers to mental health care access reached more than one in five youth in Los Angeles County in a short period, according to a press release.

Early evidence found that the campaign, known as WhyWeRise, was linked to positive outcomes, including supportive attitudes toward people with mental illness, awareness of the challenges facing the mentally ill and mobilization toward activism surrounding mental health issues.

“The focus on advocacy and community engagement is a very unique approach among mental health campaigns and so it’s important that the County did an evaluation to find out who it was reaching and whether it worked,” Rebecca L. Collins, PhD, senior behavioral scientist at RAND Corporation, told Healio Psychiatry.

“That can inform decisions about continuing the campaign and making any needed adjustments to increase effectiveness or expand its audience,” she continued. “It will also help others to learn from the County’s experience and decide whether to use a similar approach in their own areas.”

To determine the campaign’s reach and impact, the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health and the California Mental Health Services Authority commissioned researchers from the RAND Corporation to assess the first phase of the WhyWeRise campaign and the centerpiece of the campaign — the WeRise event, which occurred from May 19 through June 10, 2018. The WeRise event took place in downtown Los Angeles, and visitors experienced an immersive art gallery, rally, performances, panel discussions and workshops about mental health challenges, according to the release.

The investigators conducted and analyzed in-person interviews of event participants; conducted an online survey of more than 1,000 youth throughout Los Angeles County; and analyzed data from Twitter users in Los Angeles that related to mental health and well-being before and during the campaign.

Collins and colleagues found that the campaign reached 22% of youth aged 14 to 24 years in Los Angeles County.

After conducting in-person interviews, researchers found that more than 90% of youth who attended the WeRise event reported that they would recommend the event to a friend, that it made them want to be more supportive of people with mental illness and that they felt more encouraged to care for their own well-being. In addition, the researchers reported that longer time spent at the event was tied to greater perceived understanding of mental health issues and support for those with mental health issues.

The online survey results demonstrated that exposure to the campaign was associated with feeling empowered and mobilized to take part in mental health activism. Youth also reported an increased awareness of the challenges in mental illness and were more likely to know how to access care for mental health issues. The campaign was also tied to a moderate rise in discussion of mental health on Twitter among Los Angeles users, according to the RAND researchers.

To further strengthen the campaign and build on its early success, the RAND research team recommended:

including approaches to reducing negative stereotypes and increasing mental illness–related knowledge;
engaging men, younger audiences and people without a previous connection to mental health; and
building stronger social media connections.

When asked over email interview with Healio Psychiatry whether a mental health campaign like this can be implemented on a larger scale, Collins said “I think that is very possible.”

“The campaign consisted mainly of social media outreach, with the events that were held in downtown [Los Angeles] as a great way to stimulate interest and make the online campaign more personal and impactful,” she said. “Those same strategies can easily be scaled up with additional events in other cities or rural areas and continuing and broadening social media outreach. A similar campaign would seem possible at the state level, or even nationally.” – by Savannah Demko

References:

Collins RL, et al. Evaluation of Los Angeles County's Mental Health Community Engagement Campaign. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2754.html. Accessed on Nov. 14, 2018.

Disclosure: Collins is an employee of RAND.