(197e) Improving the Validity of an Instrument to Measure Mental Health Help-Seeking Beliefs for Diverse Institutional Contexts

Mental health differentially impacts undergraduate engineering students who are historically underserved in engineering. Further, engineering students who self-reported symptoms of mental health distress are significantly less likely to have sought professional help for their mental health. Increasing professional help-seeking behavior can improve the prognosis of mental health problems in emerging adults (i.e., 18-25 years of age) and reduce the potential for progression to more chronic or severe disorders. Therefore, this work aims to use stakeholder-driven research to identify mental health interventions across a College of Engineering by answering the following research questions: 1) What are the College specific barriers and facilitators to a culture of mental health? and 2) What do College stakeholders identify as key priority areas for transforming the culture of the College to be more supportive of mental health? Through Group Level Assessment (GLA) focus groups, participants identify and prioritize areas for improvement within a program and work together as the core stakeholders to identify next steps. This participatory action research model allows for the development of interventions that reflect the needs of the community while taking into account the diversity of the population. Additionally, inclusion of stakeholders in the development of interventions can lead to increased stakeholder buy-in, allowing for the development of more sustainable interventions. Through this talk, we will highlight the results of focus groups with approximately 40 engineering students. Outcomes of the focus groups include student identified interventions that aim to accelerate transformation of the College cultures towards being more supportive of student mental health.