The Relationship Between Mental Health Literacy and Social Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study in China

In this study, 793 college students were examined through the utilization of the socioeconomic status scale, mental health literacy scale, and social well-being questionnaire at T1 and T2, respectively, with the aim of exploring the relationship between mental health literacy and social well-being and the relative static and dynamic development of the two. The results indicated that mental health literacy was significantly and positively correlated with social well-being to a moderate extent (T1: <i>r</i> = 0.31; T2: <i>r</i> = 0.35). Furthermore, the across-lagged model was employed to determine the relationship between mental health literacy and social well-being over time, revealing that mental health literacy and social well-being merely have a unidirectional predictive relationship; social well-being at T1 can significantly and positively predict mental health literacy at T2, but mental health literacy at T1 cannot predict social well-being at T2. We carried out the latent change score model and discovered that a higher level of T1 social well-being can facilitate the enhancement of mental health literacy subsequently.