Mental Health Service Use Among Young Adults: A Communication Framework for Program Development

Research on mental health service engagement has been dominated by attempts to identify determinants of engagement. Such knowledge is important but incomplete. Once identified, program designers need to use evidence-based principles to design programs to bring about changes in the empirically identified determinants. Research is relatively silent on such principles. This article develops a framework to guide program designers’ as they address factors that constrain and/or facilitate engagement. The framework is grounded in communication theory and evidence from related behavioral science research. The literature is summarized and used to generate a check-list of questions to consider when structuring engagement programs.