Effect of community members' willingness to disclose a mental disorder on their psychiatric symptom scores: analysis of data from two randomised controlled trials of mental health first aid training.

Greater willingness to disclose did not affect psychiatric symptom scores. Because the trials increased willingness to disclose through a randomly assigned intervention, they provide a strong causal test of the masking hypothesis. It is therefore unlikely that changes in willingness to disclose are masking reductions in prevalence in the population.