Digital public health interventions for the promotion of mental well-being and health behaviors among university students: a rapid review

Student life offers many opportunities for personal development; however, this transitional phase often also poses challenges to mental health. Various factors associated with university life, such as academic stress and financial burdens, have been found to exacerbate psychological distress and contribute to increased alcohol and substance use among students. Our aim is to closely examine (i) components of available digital public health interventions (DPHIs), (ii) to evaluate their effectiveness for promoting well-being, health behaviors, and reducing symptoms of mental disorders among university students and (iii) to rate the quality of the evidence identified in this rapid review. We conducted a rapid review to capture the evidence on DPHIs for university students. We adhered to the methodological criteria recommended by the Cochrane Rapid Reviews Methods Group and PRISMA. The literature search was performed in Ovid MEDLINE to look for articles related to university students, mental well-being, mental health, and DPHIs published between June 2018 - June 2023. The selection was carried out in two steps: Screening of titles and abstracts and screening of full texts. One thousand one hundred thirty-two articles were screened, of which 24 met the inclusion criteria for data extraction. (i) Of the intervention components in the included studies, 18 used web-based platforms, while six used smartphone applications. The interventions were aimed at improving mental health (68%), reducing substance use (28%), promoting physical activity (PA) (36%) and changing eating habits (16%). (ii) 42% of the included studies were able to demonstrate significant effects in the intended direction for mental health, 4% for substance use, 25% for PA and 8% for eating behavior. (iii) The quality assessment revealed that 58% of the studies were classified with 'some concerns', indicating moderate bias, while 29% were classified as 'high risk', suggesting considerable bias affecting the validity of the results. This rapid review comprehensively summarized intervention components of DPHIs. Further, the findings of this review provide significant insights into the effectiveness of DPHIs targeting mental well-being and health behaviors among university students. The studies included in the analysis demonstrate varying degrees of success across different domains, highlighting both the potential and limitations of DPHIs.