Mental Health Literacy in Healthcare Students: An Expansion of the Mental Health Literacy Scale.

Objective: Although the recently developed mental health literacy scale showed significant score differences between general population and mental health professionals, to this date there is no published scale intended to specifically assess mental health literacy (MHL) in healthcare students. This study constructed a 26-item scale-based measure to assess multiple components of MHL and associated psychometric properties in a sample of medical and public health students of 11 universities in Taiwan.

Methods: The development and validation of the scale comprised three phases: measure development, pilot testing (n = 32), and psychometric properties examination (n = 1294).