Discussion
generalised
ADVERSE EVENTS, SECONDARY
This pragmatic crossover RCT evaluated the efficacy of an online psychoeducational Suicide prevention program, “Talk to Me”, firstly in improving university students’ ability to identify and respond to suicidal statements; and, secondly, in improving participants’ knowledge of the program’s content, their ability to recover from stress and adverse events, academic stress, global distress, generalised self-efficacy, and attitudes towards help-seeking behaviour when experiencing mental health issues. Despite the lack of significance for the “Talk to Me” MOOC compared to treatment as usual, in improving the primary and secondary outcomes of this study, students expressed high satisfaction with the program. Although the reason for these contradictory findings is unknown, it highlights the benefits of capturing the student’s views about the program along with the outcome measures [Notably, the feasibility and robustness of the outcome framework utilised to measure the efficacy of the MOOC were not assessed prior to the RCT [As discussed in the protocol of the present study [Accurately measuring university students’ situational responses to suicidal crises is challenging [Overall, all of the participants who participated in the post-program survey (60%) reported high levels of satisfaction with the “Talk to Me” MOOC content, generally finding the content easy to learn and engaging. It is important that online programs targeting university students are contemporary and enable an emotional connection with participants. A recent systematic review identified intervention-specific and person-specific factors that influence the usage of digital mental health interventions that should be considered. These factors include the medium of delivery mode, language used and helpfulness of the overall program [Students identified strongly with content relating to mental fitness. Mental fitness is a state of psychological well-being derived from one’s thoughts and emotions and is based on the need for relatedness, competency and autonomy support [Finally, the online delivery of the program provided students with the opportunity to access the material in their own time [