Evaluation of an Online Campaign for Promoting Help-Seeking Attitudes for XXXX Using a Facebook Advertisement: An Online Randomized Controlled Experiment.

@entity1 @entity308
BACKGROUND: A @entity308 -awareness campaign delivered through the Internet has been recommended as a public health approach that would enhance mental health literacy and encourage help-seeking attitudes. However, the outcomes of such a campaign remain understudied. OBJECTIVE: The main aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an online @entity308 awareness campaign, which was informed by the theory of planned behavior, to encourage help-seeking attitudes for @entity308 and to enhance mental health literacy in Hong Kong. The second aim was to examine click-through behaviors by varying the affective facial expressions of @entity1 in the Facebook advertisements. METHODS: Potential @entity1 were recruited through Facebook advertisements, using either a happy or sad face illustration. Volunteer @entity1 registered for the study by clicking on the advertisement and were invited to leave their personal email addresses to receive educational content about @entity308 . The @entity1 were randomly assigned into two groups (campaign or control), and over a four consecutive week period, received either the campaign material or official information developed by the Hospital Authority in Hong Kong. Pretests and posttests were conducted before and after the campaign to measure the differences in help-seeking attitudes and mental health literacy among the campaign and control groups. RESULTS: Of the 199 @entity1 that registered and completed the pretest, 116 (55 campaign and 62 control) completed the campaign and the posttest. At the posttest, we found no significant changes in help-seeking attitudes between the campaign and control groups, but the campaign group @entity1 demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in mental health literacy (P=.031) and a higher willingness to access additional information (P<.001) than the control group. Moreover, the happy face Facebook advertisement attracted more click-throughs by users into the website than did the sad face advertisement (P=.03). CONCLUSIONS: The present study provides evidence that an online campaign can enhance @entity1 's mental health literacy. It also demonstrates the practicality and effectiveness of an online @entity308 awareness campaign using a Facebook-based recruitment strategy and distribution of educational materials through emails. It is important for future studies to take advantage of the popularity of online social media and conduct evaluative research on mental health promotion campaigns.
