The Relationship Between Mental Health Literacy, Overall Adaptation and Mental Health of University Freshers [Response to Letter]

This article responds to:

The Relationship Between Mental Health Literacy, Overall Adaptation and Mental Health of University Freshers [Letter]

Dear editor

We would like to express our gratitude to Mr. Lameky for his attention to and positive evaluation of our research. In response to the two issues he raised, we offer the following explanations:

Regarding the first issue, the potential for social desirability bias is acknowledged in most survey studies. We have taken precautions to address this concern by explicitly addressing it in the survey instructions to minimize social desirability bias. Additionally, the measurement tools for Mental Health Literacy (MHL) and Mental Health (MH) that we employed are well-established, with language formulations that are relatively mild and avoid sensitive issues.^1,2 We believe that even if social desirability bias exists, its impact on the research results would be minimal. After data collection, we conducted a formal review of each participant’s responses, and any questionnaires with suspected social desirability bias were excluded.

Regarding the second issue, we appreciate Lameky’s feedback, and we acknowledge that the current study utilizes a cross-sectional research design, which has inherent limitations in establishing cause-and-effect relationships between variables and does not capture changes in Mental Health Literacy (MHL) and Mental Health (MH) over time. The paper reports only a snapshot of our ongoing research. Our plan is to conduct repeated measurements on the same group of participants, using the same MHL and MH tools at one-year intervals over four years during their university education. This longitudinal approach aims to further explore causal relationships between variables. The data reported in the paper were collected in October 2022, and the second set of data was completed in October 2023, with the remaining two sets expected in October 2024 and 2025. We anticipate exploring causal relationships between MHL and MH based on four years of repeated measurements. We look forward to smoothly conducting future research, and if possible, we will consider submitting a paper on the results of the four-year repeated measurements to your journal.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. We look forward to contributing to the ongoing discourse on our research.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts in interest in this communication.