Mental health literacy development: Application of online and in-person professional development for preservice teachers to address knowledge, stigma, and help-seeking intentions

Educators play a significant role in addressing student mental health. However, most educators in Canada indicate that they did not receive adequate mental health education to prepare for this role. One potential solution is to engage preservice teachers and provide professional development opportunities for improving their mental health literacy before they enter the workforce. We developed a professional development opportunity (both online and in-person) for preservice teachers to learn how to utilize a mental health literacy resource in their future classrooms. One hundred seventy-six preservice teachers in the secondary and middle years programs from a large Canadian university faculty of education voluntarily participated in this quasi-experimental study. They were assigned to 3 groups based on their demographics (preservice teachers in either the urban or rural secondary or middle years cohorts), with 1 group receiving the intervention face-to-face, 1 group receiving it online, and the third group as control. They were evaluated on knowledge, stigma and help-seeking intentions at baseline, immediately post the intervention, and at 3-month follow-up. Both the in-person and the online groups demonstrated statistically significant improvements on knowledge, stigma reduction, and enhancement on help-seeking intentions post the intervention (p<.000), compared to the control group. Knowledge and stigma outcomes were sustained at 3-month follow-up (p <.000). The use of both an online professional development and in-person delivery approaches can be considered as viable strategies to promote the mental health literacy of preservice teachers, increasing the ease and reach of this evidence-based mental health literacy resource.