%A JIANG Guangrong, LI Danyang, REN Zhihong, YAN Yupeng, WU Xinchun, ZHU Xu, YU Lixia, XIA Mian, LI Fenglan, WEI Hui, ZHANG Yan, ZHAO Chunxiao, ZHANG Lin %T The status quo and characteristics of Chinese mental health literacy %0 Journal Article %D 2021 %J Acta Psychologica Sinica %R 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00182 %P 182-198 %V 53 %N 2 %U {https://journal.psych.ac.cn/acps/CN/abstract/article_4852.shtml} %8 2021-02-25 %X

A systematic nationwide sampling survey was conducted for the purpose of understanding the mental health literacy of the Chinese adults. The results indicated that the mental health literacy levels among adults in different cities were low to moderate. The influences of the demographic variables (e.g., geographical distribution, gender, and age) on mental health literacy were small but significant. Regarding the structure of mental health literacy, mental health maintenance and promotion literacy was better than mental illness coping literacy, and self-help literacy was better than helping others literacy. The survey found that the knowledge had relatively high individual differences, whereas attitudes and behaviors had relatively low individual differences, concerning the contents of the mental health literacy. In addition, among the social influencing factors of mental health literacy, the socio-economic status was the most effective one, which showed a large effect size in the knowledge and a small to medium effect size in the attitudes and behavior tendency. These findings implicate that improving mental health literacy is an arduous task, and improving the literacy of coping with mental illness should be the focus and breakthrough point of the current practice of mental health literacy promotion.