Alleviating Help-Seeking Stigma Among Depressed College Students Through Shadow Social Marketing: A Meso-Level Intervention to a Wicked Problem

IF 2.3 Q3 BUSINESS Social Marketing Quarterly Pub Date : 2024-01-02 DOI:10.1177/15245004231225457
Paromita Goswami, Jaideep Ghosh
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Abstract

The current study addresses the issue of societal stigma attached to mental health issues of college students, which strongly suppress their attempts at help-seeking. ✓We design a meso-level midstream intervention to effect a behavior change of mentally depressed students, who, due to internalized societal stigma attached to mental health issues, strongly evade help-seeking. ✓We use theoretical arguments and formative research to design a shadow social marketing (SSM) meso-intervention to normalize help-seeking behavior of individuals suffering from mental health issues. ✓We perform field-testing of our intervention to ascertain its comparative efficacy against two competing micro-interventions. To address a complex problem that does not have a direct, clear-cut solution at either the micro or the macro level, we investigate, in this study, whether an SSM meso-intervention performs better than micro-interventions in alleviating social stigma attached to mental health issues. Its primary benefit is to establish a connection between the micro and the macro levels. Social marketing scholarship underscores a number of undesirable consequences of micro-level social marketing interventions that directly target individuals who suffer from mental depression, because their attempts at help-seeking are grossly suppressed by societal stigma attached to mental health issues. Our study contributes to the understanding of how the SSM meso-intervention could serve as a better alternative to direct interventions in normalizing help-seeking behaviour of affected individuals. We hope that changes of social norms at the community level can eventually lead to societal macro-level changes with modification and enhancement of institutional norms. We use an SSM approach to design a meso-level, midstream intervention to alleviate societal stigma that deters help-seeking of mentally depressed students in an educational institution. We use survey methods for data collection and Tobit regression for data analysis to empirically test our meso-intervention against two other micro-level interventions. Our hypothesis that stigmatized individuals are more likely to avail of wellbeing-related services offered by a platform based on an SSM, meso-intervention rather than by one that does not adopt such a strategy is empirically supported strongly ([Formula: see text]). A meso-level intervention is an essential prerequisite to bring about macro-level changes to address stigma attached to mental health issues. As a practical matter, changes of social norms at the community level have a strong potential for bringing about societal macro-level changes with modifications and enhancements of institutional norms and eventual micro-level help-seeking behavior.
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通过影子社会营销减轻抑郁大学生的求助耻辱感:针对恶性问题的中层干预措施
本研究探讨了大学生心理健康问题所带来的社会污名化问题,这种污名化严重抑制了他们寻求帮助的尝试。✓我们设计了一种中层中游干预措施,以实现精神抑郁学生的行为改变,这些学生由于心理健康问题所带来的社会污名而强烈地逃避寻求帮助。✓我们利用理论论证和形成性研究设计了一种影子社会营销(SSM)中层干预措施,以规范心理健康问题患者的求助行为。✓我们对干预措施进行了实地测试,以确定其与两个相互竞争的微型干预措施的比较效果。为了解决一个在微观或宏观层面都没有直接、明确解决方案的复杂问题,我们在本研究中调查了 SSM 中观干预在减轻心理健康问题的社会耻辱感方面是否比微观干预更有效。它的主要好处是在微观和宏观层面之间建立联系。社会营销学术研究强调,直接针对精神抑郁症患者的微观层面的社会营销干预措施会产生一系列不良后果,因为他们寻求帮助的尝试会受到精神健康问题所带来的社会污名的严重压制。我们的研究有助于人们理解社会营销中层干预如何能更好地替代直接干预,使受影响者的求助行为正常化。我们希望,社区层面的社会规范变化最终能通过修改和加强制度规范,带来社会宏观层面的变化。我们采用 SSM 方法设计了一种中观层面的中游干预措施,以减轻阻碍教育机构中精神抑郁学生寻求帮助的社会成见。我们使用调查方法收集数据,并使用托比特回归法进行数据分析,从而对我们的中层干预措施与另外两种微观干预措施进行实证检验。我们的假设得到了实证的有力支持([公式:见正文]),即被污名化的个人更有可能利用基于 SSM 的中间干预平台提供的与福祉相关的服务,而不是利用未采用此类策略的平台。中层干预是实现宏观变革的必要前提,以解决心理健康问题所带来的耻辱感。实际上,社区层面的社会规范变革具有很大的潜力,可以通过修改和加强制度规范以及最终微观层面的求助行为,带来社会宏观层面的变革。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
4.30
自引率
16.70%
发文量
21
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