‘It’s Nothing Serious I Suppose’ Family Help-Seeking for Adolescent Social Anxiety

Abstract

This article investigates how families seek professional supports for adolescent social anxiety. Many adolescents meet diagnostic criteria for social anxiety disorder but do not access professional mental health supports. Access to timely interventions is important because social anxiety has a range of developmental implications and typically persists into adulthood when untreated. Twelve adolescents (aged 14 to 18) who had attended mental health services for support with social anxiety and 13 mothers of such adolescents participated in semi-structured interviews which were analysed thematically. Findings indicated that mothers play an important role in noticing difficulties and initiating help-seeking for their children, although adolescents and their mothers can initially view anxiety as ‘just shyness’ and often seek help for a range of difficulties, including unhappiness, rather than anxiety specifically. Furthermore, many adolescents described experiencing help-seeking as embarrassing or shameful. Implications for facilitating families to access professional supports for adolescents are discussed.

Accessing mental health services for a child living with anxiety: Parents’ lived experience and recommendations

“…For many parents in our study, their ability to seek and obtain care was hindered by not knowing when to seek help and where to access services, having to learn to navigate the mental heath care system, facing healthcare professionals’ dismissal of their concerns and knowledge, and having limited financial resources to obtain services in the private sector or those not covered by insurance plans. Our findings are consistent with: (1) results of the handful of studies that have documented parents’ lived experience of access to mental health services for child anxiety disorders both in Canada [ 44 , 45 ] and abroad [ 12 , 41 , 42 ]; (2) the few studies that have examined barriers to access in the context of child anxiety disorders [ 38 – 42 ]; and (3) the literature on the barriers parents face when accessing mental health services (not specific to anxiety) for their child [ 30 – 36 ]. The finding that the barriers related to parents’ ability to obtain care identified in this study have been reported in other studies as noted above highlights the need to support parents, regardless of mental health condition for which care is sought, by strengthening their ability to identify mental health problems and ensuring information about available services and mental health care system navigation is readily available (e.g., primary care clinics).…”

“…The poor availability of services was also a common theme in our study as was lack of timely services and interim supports. These findings are consistent with results of qualitative studies that have examined parents’ lived experience of access in the context of child anxiety disorders [ 12 , 41 , 42 , 44 , 45 ], studies that have focused specifically on access to services for childhood anxiety [ 38 – 40 ], and the larger body of evidence on barriers parents face when accessing mental health services for their child (non-specific to anxiety or a mental health diagnosis) [ 30 – 36 ]. Our findings thus reinforce that for childhood anxiety as well as other childhood mental health disorders, service availability (whether services are physically available and can be reached in a timely manner) [ 26 ] necessitates ongoing investment and enhancement.…”

“…That is, parents spoke at length about how lack of information of available services, staff shortages, and difficulty getting someone to listen made it challenging to recognize that services for their child could be reached. Although studies of parents’ lived experience of accessing services for childhood anxiety documented these challenges [ 12 , 41 , 42 , 44 , 45 ], our study is the first to report the influential role of these challenges on the approachability of services (whether information about services is available/accessible and parents know that services exist and can be reached) [ 26 ].…”

“…They also spoke about factors that influenced whether they perceived services as appropriate: child-related factors such as lack of improvement in the child’s condition and power given to the child to make decisions, and service-related characteristics such as the cultural sensitivity of services and the fit between services and family’s needs. Of the five studies that have documented parents’ lived experience of accessing services for childhood anxiety [ 12 , 41 , 42 , 44 , 45 ], none identified factors that influenced parents’ perception of acceptability and appropriateness of services. Only in Boulter and Rickwood’s study [ 12 ], the fit between services and family’s needs was identified as having an impact on future help-seeking but not on perceptions of service appropriateness or acceptability.…”

“…Two of these studies were conducted in the U.K [ 41 , 42 ], one in Australia [ 12 ], and two in Canada [ 44 , 45 ]. Leung et al [ 44 ] recently explored the experience of parents accessing mental services for their child (6 to 17 years) with complex mental healthcare needs residing in primarily urban centres in Alberta, Canada.…”