The Persuasive Cost of Mental Health Message Fatigue

Mental health messaging is designed to promote well-being, reduce stigma, and encourage help-seeking. Repeated exposure to such messaging, however, can lead to message fatigue, a motivational state that undermines attention and elaboration even when messages remain memorable. We present two studies that explore how message fatigue affects attention, elaboration, and perceived effectiveness of mental health messages among college students. In Study 1, a demographically representative sample of 218 US college students viewed a series of mental health infographics. Self-reported elaboration, message evaluation, and memory was assessed following exposure. In study 2, 70 participants pre-screened for high and low levels of message fatigue completed an eye-tracking laboratory experiment focusing on visual attention during exposure. Across both studies, message fatigue significantly reduced elaboration which, in turn, predicted lower message effectiveness. Further analysis showed that diminished elaboration mediated the effect of message fatigue on perceived message effectiveness. Eye-tracking data showed that high fatigue participants exhibited shorter fixation durations than low fatigue participants across all design elements (e.g. image, text, graph), indicating reduced visual attention. Findings highlight how mental health campaigns can lose persuasive force through reduced elaboration and attention, informing creative and media strategies for managing message fatigue.