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This study examined professional psychological help seeking among 1,045 white American and Asian American students from 70 U.S. colleges and universities who had seriously considered attempting suicide. The authors found that Asian American college students had lower rates of professional psychological help seeking for their suicide ideation than White American college students. Guided by social network perspectives on professional psychological help seeking, the authors also tested mediators of this racial disparity. Relative to white Americans, Asian Americans were advised by fewer people (especially fewer family members) to seek professional help, which was, in turn, associated with lower rates of professional psychological help seeking for suicide ideation. These findings underscore the importance of gatekeeping as a suicide prevention strategy for Asian American college students.

In the present study, we used multigroup structural equation modeling in a sample of college students (N = 2,461) to examine ethnic and gender differences in the connections between dispositonal hope and intentions to seek psychological help from formal and informal sources. In a personalemotional problem scenario, we found a robust positive relationship between hope and intentions to seek help from informal sources, but no association for formal sources. In a suicidal thoughts scenario, hope was positively associated with intentions to seek both informal and formal psychological help. Results of exploratory moderation analyses indicated that the model was invariant across non-Latino White students and Asian American students, as well as across men and women. These findings address critical gaps in the hope and help-seeking literature, and suggest that increasing college students' dispositional hope may provide a unique