Development and Validation of the Mental Health Expression Scale: An Expert-Guided Approach for a Student-Centered Tool

Mental health expression is a crucial but often overlooked aspect of emotional well-being. While current tools address stigma, literacy, and help-seeking, there is still a need to understand how people experience and engage in expressing their mental health. The tool was carefully reviewed by experts and tested among students, with results analyzed to ensure each item was clear, consistent, and meaningful. The results confirm that the developed scale has strong content validity and excellent internal consistency, making the scale a reliable measure of mental health expression. The developed scale holds the potential to enhance mental health programs by providing a simple yet effective way to give voice to students’ experiences.