Increasing Social Support for Depressed Individuals: A Cross-Cultural Assessment of an Affect-Expectancy Approach

Abstract

Depression is a mental illness affecting 121 million people. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration recently launched a national, bilingual (English and Spanish) campaign to motivate young adults to support friends with mental illness. This article highlights and assesses the usefulness of two theoretically derived variables for increasing the social support received by all depressed individuals: (a) affect and (b) social support outcome expectations. In accord with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's bilingual campaign, the authors conducted two studies using intercepts at 2 swap meets in the U.S. Southwest. One study sample consisted of Spanish-dominant Hispanics, the other non-Hispanics. For both samples, results indicate that affect, social support outcome expectations, and their interaction accounted for more than 50% of the variance of social support intentions (67% in the Hispanic sample when familism was considered). Affect is commonplace in the helping behavior literature; results indicate social support outcome expectations deserve equal consideration. Moreover, an unexpected finding emerged: Perceiving a lack of willpower, need for attention, and lack of moral character to be the cause of depression resulted in increased sympathy among the Hispanic sample but increased anger among non-Hispanics.

Persuading People with Depression to Seek Help: Respect the Boomerang

“…However, while two studies indicating that a print D-PSA can backfire is reason for apprehension, it is nowhere near the standard for determining courses of action. It is a clear message that individuals creating D-PSAs cannot create messages based on intuition or creative whims (for a cross-cultural warning see Siegel et al, 2012). Anyone who creates a D-PSA targeting people with depression without considering how the mind of a person with depression operates is engaging in behavior akin to reckless endangerment.…”

“…Outreach efforts targeting people with depression, however, might be as potentially dangerous as they are necessary. Across too many health campaigns, and on too many occasions, health campaign efforts have boomeranged and increased the very behavior the campaign sought to curtail (see Crano, Siegel, & Alvaro, 2012). Knowing whether depression campaigns have the potential to meet the same fate is critical, as the boomerang may lead to an irreversible outcome.…”

Resistance, reactance, and misinterpretation: Highlighting the challenge of persuading people with depression to seek help

“…Due to the critical nature of this situation, scholars have engaged in numerous research and intervention endeavors with the goal of increasing help-seeking among people with elevated levels of depressive symptomatology (e.g., for reviews, see Corrigan, Druss, & Perlick, 2014;Dumesnil & Verger, 2009;Gulliver, Griffiths, Christensen, & Brewer, 2012;Jorm et al, 2003;Niederkrotenthaler, Reidenberg, Till, & Gould, 2014). Some of these efforts targeted the general public (e.g., Corrigan, Morris, Michaels, Rafacz, & Rüsch, 2012;Paykel, Hart, & Priest, 1998;Siegel et al, 2012); more in line with the focus of the current review, others primarily focused on directly influencing people with heightened depressive symptomatology (e.g., Christensen, Leach, Barney, Mackinnon, & Griffiths, 2006). Among those directly targeting help-seeking among people with elevated levels of depressive symptomatology, there have been reports of success (e.g., Syzdek, Green, Lindgren, & Addis, 2016); however, other studies have struggled to achieve the desired impact (e.g., Costin et al, 2009), with some chronicling negative outcomes (e.g., Keeler & Siegel, 2016).…”

Influencing Help-Seeking Among People With Elevated Depressive Symptomatology

“…Help-seeking outcome expectancies consisted of six items on a scale with end points from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). This scale was written for the current study and was modeled after a scale on socialsupport outcome expectancies (Siegel et al, 2012; example item: "Seeking help for depression will make a positive difference"). Reliability was high (α = .87; M = 5.67, SD = 0.94, skew = -0.78, SE skew = 0.07, kurtosis = 1.03, SE kurtosis = 0.15).…”

“…The current research endeavor is scientifically important because successful approaches for reaching out to people with depression are in critical need (Siegel et al, 2012). Most people suffering from depression never receive treatment (González et al, 2010), and 15% to 20% of people with depression end their lives through suicide (see Miret, Ayuso-Mateos, Sanchez-Moreno, & Vieta, 2013, for a review).…”