Peer-Presented Versus Mental Health Service Provider-Presented Mental Health Outreach Programs for University Students: Randomized Controlled Trial

Participants were recruited using a study flyer distributed to students in-person on campus and online through email listservs, social media platforms, and from an existing database of university students who participated in previous studies and agreed to be followed-up with. Given the self-paced nature of the program, a staggered recruitment approach was used wherein new participants completed the online baseline questionnaires between January 2020 until early March 2020.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three groups (MHSP-presented, peer-presented, or a wait-list comparison group), while counterbalancing the three groups based on gender and preference for seeking help from MHSPs or peers (i.e., using results from the General Help-seeking Questionnaire). Two weeks after the baseline questionnaire was sent, participants in the intervention groups received either the MHSP-presented video or the peer-presented video (video 1) depending on which group they were randomly assigned to, as well as a link for access to the resource library. The following two videos were sent two weeks apart. Participants were encouraged to access the resource library over the duration of the program and were reminded with each video link sent. All participants then received post (T2) and follow-up measures (T3) 6 and 10 weeks following the baseline completion respectively. Participants in the wait-list comparison group were only asked to complete evaluation measures at the three time points (they only received the videos and resource library at the end of the study). Following completion of the study, students received an e-mail with a personalized profile indicating their individual scores on various measures and all participants received full access to the program resources (videos and resource library).