Mental health first aid training and assessment for healthcare professionals and medical nursing students: a systematic review.

Abstract

<h4>Purpose</h4>To summarize the effect of mental health first aid (MHFA) on paramedics and medical nursing students and provide direction to future training and research.<h4>Methods</h4>Seven databases, including Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, China Knowledge, Wanfang, and China Biomedical Literature Database, were searched for relevant studies from database establishment up to January 31, 2023. The Cochrane risk of bias tool was used to assess the quality of randomized controlled trials, qualitative studies, and single-armed trials on the basis of the literature evaluation criteria developed by the JBI Center for Evidence-Based Healthcare in Australia. Mixed-sex studies were assessed by using the mixed-methods assessment tool (MMAT 2018).<h4>Results</h4>The review identified 11 studies that met the criteria, most of which reported on the effects of MHFA training in terms of mental health literacy (referred to as MHL), MHFA intentions and confidence, stigma, and changes in social distance. A few studies analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of MHFA training courses, motivation to complete MHFA, barriers and facilitators to MHFA training, and participants' perceptions of implementing MHFA training.<h4>Conclusions</h4>The MHFA curriculum is practical for healthcare workers and medical nursing students. In the future, a standardized training program based on the population characteristics of healthcare workers and medical nursing students must be developed to standardize the measurement of outcome indicators to reflect the effectiveness of implementing the MHFA training curriculum. Our study has been registered to PROSPERO under registration number CRD42024519793.