Abstract
Aim: This study explored the influence of gender on the mental health literacy (MHL) of young people.
Method: In all, 370 young people (aged 17–22 years) completed one of two questionnaires, in which they had to label/provide a diagnosis for nine vignettes of people with different mental health disorders. Half the vignettes had a male and the other half had a female character. They also rated the vignette person on nine scales.
Results: There was much variance in recognition for the different disorders, with a range of 77.0%–27.3% of participants “correctly” labeling the vignettes. Very few gender differences were found, but age and experience of/education in mental health were found to be positively correlated with MHL.
Conclusion: Gender differences in MHL may not be as great as previously thought. Although some disorders were recognized by the majority of participants, there are still common disorders that were not.
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