ArticlePLOS mental health2025
Receiving support for mental health problems from family and friends: Measurement and impact on mental health, relationships, and help-seeking.
Article in PLOS mental health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mental health-related discrimination by friends, family members and intimate partners is especially common, particularly in the form of avoidance and dismissive reactions. In contrast, good quality initial support (mental health first aid) is thought to improve help-seeking and mental health outcomes, although there are few studies that have examined this. This study aimed to develop a measure of mental health support skills that could be self-reported by the recipient of help, and to use this measure to test whether better quality support was related to better outcomes. We recruited 1116 adults from Prolific who reported a recent mental health problem or crisis and were helped by someone close to them such as a family member or friend. Participants completed a recipient version of the Mental Health Support Scale, which asked about actions the other person took to support them, based on mental health first aid guidelines. They also completed measures assessing convergent and divergent validity and perceived impact of the support from their helper. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a scale with two factors of recommended and not recommended actions with acceptable psychometric properties. Receiving recommended mental health first aid support was associated with perceived benefits by the recipient of help, including improved mental health (r = .37), a closer relationship with their helper (r = .39), and impact on help seeking from a doctor (r = .45), mental health professional (r = .49) or a phone or digital mental health service (r = .38). These findings provide empirical evidence for the potential benefits of upskilling community members in effective mental health first aid support.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.