Effects of a mental health education program on depressive symptomsamong patients with depression at Chiang Kham Hospital

Abstract

Mental health education therefore not only emphasizes providing general knowledge about depression, but also, includes training patients with skills to adapt and effectively cope with depressive symptoms, which may help reduce depression symptoms and preventing future relapses. This quasi-experimental research, one-group-repeated measures design aimed to examine the effects of a mental health education program on depression symptoms which were measured before, post-intervention, and during the follow-up period. The samples comprised 30 new patients diagnosed with depression who utilized services at the psychiatric clinic of Chiang Kham Hospital between June and September 2024. The research instruments consisted of a mental health education program for patients with depression wherein participants attended five sessions, each session lasting 30–60 minutes. The research instruments included a personal information questionnaire and a depression assessment scale. The depression assessment scale demonstrated a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of .88, indicating high reliability. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and repeated measures analysis of variance (repeated measure ANOVA). The results demonstrated that before the intervention, after program completion, and one month later, participants had an average depression score of 15.80 (SD=4.16), 6.57 (SD=4.22), and 1.20 (SD= 2.07), respectively. A comparison of the three phases revealed that the sample group that received the program had lower average depression scores than before, and at the 1-month follow-up, period, the mean score was significantly lower than before receiving the program at the .001 level (F=260.80, p<.001). Therefore, this mental health education program could be provided information on clinical nursing treatment for new cases of depressed patients to enhance their improvement in depressive symptoms.