The development and initial pilot test of a novel mental health literacy program for Muslims living in western countries
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Muslims living in Western countries experience high psychological distress yet underutilize professional mental health services. Unfortunately, research aimed at exploring strategies to improve treatment seeking in this population is limited. In this dissertation, through two studies, I developed, and pilot tested, a mental health literacy (MHL) intervention to improve treatment seeking among Western Muslims. In Study 1, I interview 10 Canadian Muslims about their beliefs about mental health and treatment seeking, employing a validated theoretical model to guide interviews and analyses. I analyse transcripts of these interview using the Framework method, generating both a priori and inductive themes. Participants recognized their susceptibility to mental health issues, believed only severe mental health problems warrant treatment, highlighted barriers to treatment (e.g., stigma, low MHL, lack of treatment access), and held generally positive beliefs about the benefits of professional treatment. My findings highlight gaps in knowledge about mental health and its treatment which could be addressed through a tailored MHL intervention. In Study 2, I outline the development of Mental Health 101: For Muslims, an intervention designed to improve MHL among Muslims living in Western countries by addressing gaps in knowledge. I pilot tested the intervention in a sample of 26 Canadian Muslims. Participants completed pre- and post-intervention questionnaires assessing MHL, public and self-stigma, attitudes toward treatment seeking, and intentions to utilize and recommend various sources of support. Participants also completed a program satisfaction questionnaire post-intervention. Participants reported high satisfaction with the intervention, improvements in MHL, intentions to recommend treatment from family physicians, mental health professionals and imams. Intentions to seek various sources of support oneself, attitudes toward treatment seeking, and self-stigma also improved. Findings highlight the potential for MH101:M, and similar interventions, to improve help-seeking among Western Muslims.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".