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  • Group-format, peer-facilitated mental health promotion interventions for students in higher education settings: a scoping review protocol

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Mental health
Protocol
Group-format, peer-facilitated mental health promotion interventions for students in higher education settings: a scoping review protocol
  1. Carrie Brooke-Sumner1,2,
  2. Mercilene T Machisa2,3,
  3. Yandisa Sikweyiya3,4,
  4. Pinky Mahlangu2,3
  1. 1 Mental Health, Alcohol, Substance Use and Tobacco Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa
  2. 2 School of Nursing and Public Health, College of Health Sciences, Howard College Campus, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa
  3. 3 Gender and Health Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa
  4. 4 School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
  1. Correspondence to Dr Carrie Brooke-Sumner; carrie.brooke-sumner{at}mrc.ac.za

Abstract

Introduction Young people in higher education face various stressors that can make them vulnerable to mental ill-health. Mental health promotion in this group therefore has important potential benefits. Peer-facilitated and group-format interventions may be feasible and sustainable. The scoping review outlined in this protocol aims to map the literature on group-format, peer-facilitated, in-person interventions for mental health promotion for higher education students attending courses on campuses in high and low/middle-income countries.

Methods and analysis Relevant studies will be identified through conducting searches of electronic databases, including Medline, CINAHL, Scopus, ERIC and PsycINFO. Searches will be conducted using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and truncation functions appropriate for each database. We will include a grey literature search. We will include articles from student participants of any gender, and published in peer-reviewed journals between 2008 and 2023. We will include English-language studies and all study types including randomised controlled trials, pilot studies and descriptive studies of intervention development. A draft charting table has been developed, which includes the fields: author, publication date, country/countries, aims, population and sample size, demographics, methods, intervention type, comparisons, peer training, number of sessions/duration of intervention, outcomes and details of measures.

Ethics and dissemination No primary data will be collected from research participants to produce this review so ethics committee approval is not required. All data will be collated from published peer-reviewed studies already in the public domain. We will publish the review in an open-access, peer-reviewed journal accessible to researchers in low/middle-income countries. This protocol is registered on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/agbfj/).

  • MENTAL HEALTH
  • PUBLIC HEALTH
  • PSYCHIATRY
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2023-080629

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors All authors conceptualised the study and developed the methods collaboratively. PM, MTM and YS contributed to conceptualisation of research questions, development of search strategy and scoping review methods. CB-S led the development of the research questions and methods and produced the initial draft of this manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

    • Funding CB-S, MTM, PM and YS are supported in this work by funds from the South African Medical Research Council Flagship projects funding.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.