Rethinking Mental Health Literacy Programmes For Enhanced Help-Seeking Behaviour among Young Male Adults

Abstract

Educating and sensitization through mental health literacy (MHL) programmes is germane to raising awareness, reducing stigma towards help-seeking, and ultimately improving help-seeking behaviours in young male adults. This theoretical paper problematises various trajectories and approaches that are engaged with; in providing mental health literacy to enhance young male adults’ help-seeking behaviour. It further advances the critical pedagogical (CP) approach as an alternative trajectory for this task. This was achieved by positioning mental health literacy as a critical engagement that relies on transformative education in order to enhance help-seeking behvaiour. This article discusses the relevance of some prominent themes in critical pedagogy to the design of mental health literacy programmes for enhanced help-seeking. It, therefore, submits that for any meaningful improvement and change to take place in the ideologies, beliefs, and attitudes of young male adults towards help-seeking, a critical pedagogical approach should be engaged, with believed that this approach will facilitate critical dialogues, reflexive thinking, and participatory learning processes. It is anticipated that embedding the CP principles into the design of MHL programmes would assist practitioners and health educators to produce a transformational change in the behaviour of young male adults towards help-seeking.

Keywords

• critical pedagogy
• help-seeking
• mental health literacy
• transformative education
• young male adults