Background: University students are reporting concerning levels of mental health distress and challenges. University mental health service provider initiatives have been shown to be effective in supporting students’ mental health, but these services are often resource-intensive. Consequently, new approaches to service delivery, such as web-based and peer support initiatives, have emerged as cost-effective and efficient approaches to support university students. However, these approaches have not been sufficiently evaluated for effectiveness or acceptability in university student populations. Objective: Thus, the overarching goal of this study was to evaluate a mental health service provider–presented versus peer-presented web-based mental health resilience–building video outreach program against a wait-list comparison group. Methods: Participants were 217 undergraduate students (mean age 20.44, SD 1.98 years; 171/217, 78.8% women) who were randomly assigned to one of the intervention groups (mental health service provider–presented: 69/217, 31.8%; peer-presented: 73/217, 33.6%) or the wait-list comparison group (75/217, 34.6%). Participants in the intervention groups were asked to watch 3 brief skill-building videos addressing strategies for building mental health resilience, whereas the comparison group was wait-listed. The mental health service provider–presented and peer-presented video series were identical in content, with presenters using a script to ensure consistency across delivery methods, but the videos differed in that they were either presented by mental health service providers or university students (peers). All participants were asked to complete web-based self-report measures of stress, coping self-efficacy, social support, social connectedness, mindfulness, and quality of life at baseline (time 1), 6 weeks later (time 2, after the intervention), and 1-month follow-up (time 3). Results: Results from a series of 2-way ANOVAs found no significant differences in outcomes among any of the 3 groups. Surprisingly, a main effect of time revealed that all students improved on several well-being outcomes. In addition, results for program satisfaction revealed that both the mental health service provider–presented and peer-presented programs were rated very highly and at comparable levels. Conclusions: Thus, findings suggest that a web-based mental health resilience–building video outreach program may be acceptable for university students regardless of it being mental health service provider–presented or peer-presented. Furthermore, the overall increases in well-being across groups, which coincided with the onset and early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggest an unexpected pattern of response among university students to the early period of the pandemic. Limitations and barriers as well as research implications are discussed. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05454592; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05454592

中文翻译：

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同行提出的与心理健康服务提供者提出的大学生心理健康外展计划：随机对照试验

背景：大学生正在报告有关心理健康困扰和挑战的程度。大学心理健康服务提供者计划已被证明在支持学生的心理健康方面是有效的，但这些服务通常是资源密集型的。因此，提供服务的新方法，例如基于网络的和同伴支持计划，已成为支持大学生的具有成本效益和高效的方法。然而，这些方法在大学生群体中的有效性或可接受性尚未得到充分评估。客观的：因此，本研究的首要目标是评估心理健康服务提供者提出的与同行提出的基于网络的心理健康复原力建设视频外展计划与候补名单比较组。方法：参与者是 217 名本科生（平均年龄 20.44，SD 1.98 岁；171/217，78.8% 女性），他们被随机分配到干预组之一（心理健康服务提供者提供：69/217，31.8%；同伴提供: 73/217, 33.6%) 或等待名单对照组 (75/217, 34.6%)。干预组的参与者被要求观看 3 个简短的技能培养视频，这些视频涉及建立心理健康复原力的策略，而对照组则被列入候补名单。心理健康服务提供者和同伴展示的​​视频系列在内容上是相同的，主持人使用脚本来确保交付方法的一致性，但视频的不同之处在于它们要么由心理健康服务提供者或大学生（同伴）。结果：一系列 2-way ANOVA 的结果发现，3 组中的任何一组的结果都没有显着差异。令人惊讶的是，时间的主要影响表明，所有学生的一些幸福感都有所提高。此外，项目满意度的结果显示，心理健康服务提供者提供的项目和同伴提供的项目都得到了很高的评价，并且处于可比较的水平。结论：因此，研究结果表明，无论是心理健康服务提供者呈现还是同伴呈现，大学生都可以接受基于网络的心理健康复原力建设视频外展计划。此外，与 COVID-19 大流行的开始和最初几周相吻合的群体间幸福感的总体提高表明大学生对大流行早期的反应模式出乎意料。讨论了限制和障碍以及研究意义。试验注册： ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05454592；https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05454592