Training TikTok creators in mental health communication benefits their audience, too: An analysis of TikTok user comments

Background: Social media platforms like TikTok are pivotal for mental health communication (MHC), providing accessible, trusted content. Despite known benefits of creator training programs in improving content quality, it's uncertain if or how these enhancements affect people who watch that content. This study examines how training programs for TikTok creators influence TikTok users’ mental health knowledge construction and intended behaviors by analyzing user comments on TikTok videos.Method: We employed LLM-assisted content analysis to annotate TikTok video comments for mental health knowledge construction and behavioral intentions. We then analyzed the impact of a creator training program on users' mental health knowledge construction through within-subject field experiments. Additionally, we extended this method to measure how TikTok's Mental Health Awareness Month (MHAM) in May 2023 affected user mental health knowledge construction and behavioral intentions.Results: LLM-assisted analysis showed that asynchronous toolkits significantly enhance mental health knowledge construction among video commenters, particularly among creators with high engagement, fewer followers, who are licensed mental health professionals, or who do not offer paid coaching services. MHAM increased mental health knowledge construction among users, though the audiences of the 7 institutions and 10 content creators that were spotlighted by TikTok during MHAM did not show this effect.Conclusions: Asynchronous toolkits improve mental health knowledge construction among video viewers. Future training should focus on emerging creators and separate toolkit learning from conference training to enhance training efficacy. In addition, promoting hashtags such as #MentalHealthAwareness can drive meaningful discussions and knowledge construction in video comments, but there is an opportunity for platforms to refine their creator selection criteria to improve on-platform mental health knowledge construction.