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International Journal of Mental Health Systems
Published in: International Journal of Mental Health Systems 1/2020

Open Access 01-12-2020 | Mood Disorders | Research

Exploring perceived costs and benefits of first aid for youth with depression: a qualitative study of Japanese undergraduates

Authors: Jun Kashihara, Shinji Sakamoto

Published in: International Journal of Mental Health Systems | Issue 1/2020

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Abstract

Background

Early interventions for depression among youth are greatly needed. Although Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) program has been developed to teach the public how to help young people with mental disorders, including depression, it has assumed human altruism and overlooked the possibility that participants would experience conflict between the costs and benefits of helping behaviors. The present qualitative study, therefore, initially explored content of the costs and benefits perceived by youth in terms of helping their peers with depression.

Methods

A total of 56 Japanese undergraduates (32 female, 24 male; Mage = 20.20, SD = 1.09) participated in the face-to-face survey. They were provided with basic knowledge about helping behaviors and were presented with a vignette describing an undergraduate with depression. Then, they left free descriptive comments on their views of the costs/benefits of helping/not helping the person in the vignette. As supplemental quantitative analyses, we statistically compared numbers of labels (n = 624), which were obtained from participants’ comments, across two (costs/benefits) × two (helping/not helping) domains. Finally, we conducted a qualitative content analysis that combined inductive and deductive methods to categorize these labels.

Results

The supplemental quantitative analyses (i.e., ANOVA and post hoc analyses) on the numbers of labels highlighted that the participants perceived suppressors (i.e., costs of helping, benefits of not helping) as well as motivators (i.e., costs of not helping) in making decision to help peers with depression. The qualitative content analysis mainly showed that: (i) the categories in each domain covered multiple facets of costs and benefits, including negative/positive effects on the participants themselves, the person in the vignette, and interpersonal relationships; and that (ii) the participants perceived the conflicts of costs and benefits regardless of whether they help their peers with depression.

Conclusions

These results provide evidence for how young people experience the conflicts between the costs and benefits of helping behaviors toward their peers with depression and reveal specific content of these costs and benefits. These findings could serve as a basis for extending YMHFA programs and designing educational content to promote public helping behaviors in realistic situations.
Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
These students had completed mandatory psychology courses, which include lectures of knowledge about depression and other mental disorders, in the first of two semesters in 2017. Therefore, we supposed that these students would know about depression when we recruited participants during the second semester.
 
2
We divided the participants into small groups and conducted the same surveys to prevent satisficing (i.e., answering questionnaires carelessly to save cognitive effort), which frequently occurs when conducting paper-and-pencil surveys with a large number of participants simultaneously and collecting data online [54, 55]. No interactive tasks between participants such as group discussions were conducted in the present survey.
 
3
Because age differences are frequently emphasized in Japanese interdependent and hierarchical society [63, 64], the participants’ responses could be biased if we reminded participants of age differences between them and “A” in the vignette. Therefore, we unspecified the age of “A” and explained that “A” is a good university friend of the readers, to imply that the participants and “A” are connected not by a hierarchical junior-senior relationship but by friendship.
 
4
We assumed that some participants would give a few answers and finish the task in a few minutes to save cognitive effort unless we set a time restriction on the task. Therefore, we set the 12-minute time restriction to indicate an intensive commitment to the task was required. No participants were still writing their answers at the 12-minute mark.
 
5
Because the present study primarily aimed to explore the content of the perceived costs and benefits of first aid using qualitative analyses, we did not conduct any a priori power calculations regarding the supplemental quantitative comparison of the numbers of labels. An ad hoc sensitivity analysis (α = 0.05, 1 − β = 0.80) performed by G*Power version 3.1 [68] showed that the present sample size (N = 56) was large enough to detect the small effect size (i.e., \(\eta_{p}^{2}\) = 0.024); therefore, we concluded that it is safe to draw conclusions from the results of null-hypothesis statistical tests conducted in the present study.
 
6
We avoided conducting a sensitivity analysis that compares the participants with/without real-life contact with people with depression here, considering that an ad hoc sensitivity analysis with a limited sample size (i.e., total N = 56) would bias the results.
 
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Metadata
Title
Exploring perceived costs and benefits of first aid for youth with depression: a qualitative study of Japanese undergraduates
Authors
Jun Kashihara
Shinji Sakamoto
Publication date
01-12-2020
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
International Journal of Mental Health Systems / Issue 1/2020
Electronic ISSN: 1752-4458
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13033-020-00366-7

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