The effect of the 'Every Mind Matters' campaign on mental health literacy: the moderating roles of socioeconomic status and ethnicity.

Abstract

We previously reported short-lived improvements in mental health literacy following the Every Mind Matters campaign, followed by a return to baseline levels. In this study, we aimed to examine whether either socioeconomic status or ethnicity moderated these improvements. We conducted regression analyses on a nationally representative, repeated cross-sectional dataset of nine survey waves from September 2019 to March 2022. Interaction terms (ethnicity*wave, socioeconomic status*wave) were entered into regression models to assess the moderating effect of these variables. Where significant interactions emerged, we obtained marginal estimates and plotted them for ease of interpretation. We found no evidence that improvements seen in mental health literacy following the launch of Every Mind Matters were moderated by ethnicity or socioeconomic status. Over time, there was some evidence of lower scores relating to symptoms recognition, knowledge of actions to improve mental health, and desire for social distance (stigma) among adults of lower socioeconomic status, which converged again for symptom recognition. These findings suggest that while a web resource can empower people and improve mental health literacy, in relation to ethnicity and socioeconomic status, it may be that while this can avoid a widening of inequalities it is insufficient to lead to a narrowing of them.