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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

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The digital buffer: A moderated mediation model of well-being, mental health literacy, psychological distress, and resilience through mHealth app use among young people in Kosovo

THE DIGITAL BUFFER: A MODERATED MEDIATION OF WELL-BEING, MENTAL HEALTH LITERACY, DISTRESS, AND RESILIENCE VIA MHEALTH APPS USE IN KOSOVO YOUTH

The effect of mental health literacy on psychological distress and resilience is not direct but operates through well-being and depends on the level of mHealth app use.

The study aimed to examine the relationship of mental health literacy with psychological distress and psychological resilience among young people in Kosovo, focusing on the mediating role of well-being and the moderating role of mobile health (mHealth) app use. In this cross-sectional study, 372 university students aged 18–25 years (mean age 20.55) completed online surveys; the measures used were the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12), the Brief Resilience Scale, the WHO-5 Well-Being Index, and the Mental Health Literacy Scale (MHLS), alongside questions about mHealth app use; the data were analyzed using SPSS 27.0 and Microsoft Excel 2019. Moderated mediation analysis (Model 59) showed that the effects of mental health literacy on both psychological distress and psychological resilience were not significant. Mental health literacy significantly predicted psychological distress only at moderate (b = -0.079, p = 0.028) and high (b = -0.163, p = 0.001) levels of mHealth app use, and psychological resilience only at high levels of app use (b = 0.007, p = 0.024). Well-being emerged as a significant predictor, showing a negative association with psychological distress (b = -0.155, p = 0.000) and a positive association with psychological resilience (b = 0.004, p = 0.006); mental health literacy consistently predicted well-being, with this relationship being stronger at low (b = -0.339, p = 0.012) and moderate (b = -0.222, p = 0.028) levels of mHealth app use. The authors report that the negative indirect effect of mental health literacy on psychological distress through reduced well-being operated primarily at low to moderate levels of app use, while this mediation mechanism ceased to be effective at high levels of use. The findings suggest that app use is a contextual factor that alters mental health dynamics.

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