Depression literacy and awareness programs among Bangladeshi students: An online survey

Mamun, MA, Naher, S, Moonajilin, MS, Mahbub Jobayar, A, Rayhan, I, Kircaburun, K ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8678-9078 and Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524, 2020. Depression literacy and awareness programs among Bangladeshi students: An online survey. Heliyon, 6 (9): e04901. ISSN 2405-8440

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Abstract

Background: Preventing depression and helping individuals to become more resilient to depression, awareness-related programs have been suggested. To implement such programs, depression literacy (D-Lit) assessment is needed. However, little information is known about it in Bangladesh, and this gap was addressed-in the present study.

Methods: An online-based cross-sectional survey was carried out among 404 university students (62.6% male; 69.3% undergraduates, mean age ¼ 22.35 AE 2.69 years). The survey included questions asking about socio-demographics, personal and family depression history, its' stigma and related programs, and the 20-item Ban-gla Depression Literacy questionnaire.

Results: The results showed a mean score of 9.30 (SD ¼ 2.75; out of total 20 scores) on the Bangla D-Lit scale. Participants had very limited knowledge of the psychotic symptoms, impact, and management subscales. Moreover , nine items out of the total twenty-items were answered correctly by at least 50% of the participants. There were no significant D-Lit score differences based on gender and past-year personal history, and family depression history. Structural equation modeling indicated that having knowledge about depression and attending depression seminars were positively related to elevated depression literacy.

Limitations: The study has some limitations due to its cross-sectional study nature and modest sample size. In addition, there the assessment of depression did not use a validated psychometric instrument and the D-Lit comprises multiple-choice responses so the real rate of depression literacy may be even lower than that found because participants could have guessed answers that they did not know.

Conclusions: Findings from this study suggest that depression literacy was low in the population studied and the findings here will help to facilitate mental health literacy awareness programs in the context of Bangladeshi students as well as those outside the country.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Heliyon
Creators:	Mamun, M.A., Naher, S., Moonajilin, M.S., Mahbub Jobayar, A., Rayhan, I., Kircaburun, K. and Griffiths, M.D.
Publisher:	Elsevier
Date:	1 September 2020
Volume:	6
Number:	9
ISSN:	2405-8440
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04901 DOI S2405-8440%2820 Publisher Item Identifier 1368695 Other
Rights:	© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jill Tomkinson
Date Added:	23 Sep 2020 17:11
Last Modified:	08 Sep 2021 11:11
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/40900

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