Mental health first aid as community practice: training, stigma reduction, and peer support among Indonesian youth

Abstract

Background: Mental-health vulnerability among Indonesian youth remains urgent: 34.9% experienced mental-health problems in the preceding year, while only 2.6% accessed relevant services. Objective: This community engagement program aimed to strengthen mental-health literacy, reduce stigmatising responses, develop bounded peer-support skills, and improve referral judgement among 40 youths aged 16–24 in Depok, Sleman. Method: A participatory planning–implementation–monitoring-evaluation design combined partner coordination, baseline and post-test questionnaires, attendance records, structured observation, simulation and product rubrics, focus groups, follow-up surveys, and institutional validation indicators. Results: Planning records documented three coordination meetings, 40 baseline questionnaires, six to eight mapped needs, five measurement instruments, and one safeguarding-referral protocol. Implementation comprised one orientation, four 120-minute sessions, 16 role-play simulations, 16 peer-team outputs, and two mentoring sessions, creating a mixed-method corpus of participation and practice. Monitoring-evaluation assessed attendance against a 75% benchmark, output quality across 16 simulations and 16 documents, and capacity against 20% literacy-confidence and 15% stigma benchmarks, complemented by two focus groups, one validation forum, and one institutional follow-up plan. Novelty: Its novelty lies in integrating culturally situated training, assessed practice, peer mentoring, participatory reflection, safeguarding, and documented institutional continuation within a single data-grounded community development framework responsive to local youth and service structures and accountable community-based mental-health support systems over time.