Mental Health Help-Seeking in Adolescence: An Exploration of Variables Associated with Help-Seeking Intent in Schools

Abstract

Internalizing disorders (including anxiety and depressive disorders) affect up to one third of adolescents ages 13-18. Although these disorders are associated with impairments in psychological, academic, social, and family domains, they are often left untreated. Schools have great potential to address this service-underutilization gap by identifying those students at risk for internalizing problems through mental health screening tools and by providing treatment at no cost for students. However, at the secondary level, school personnel partly expect high school students to initiate support for themselves. The present study advances research by exploring the variables related to adolescent mental health help-seeking intentions within the school setting. Specifically, this study assesses the utility of the Theory of Planned Behavior in an effort to identify what factors relate to high school students' willingness to seek help for internalizing problems at school. A secondary aim of this study was to examine why males are consistently less willing to seek help for mental health problems than females. Results of this study highlight important factors to target when developing interventions to increase help-seeking intent in high school students.

The power of knowledge: How mental health literacy can overcome barriers to seeking help.

“…In line with this definition, Kutcher et al (2016) added an understanding of how to obtain and maintain good mental health to the conceptualization of MHL (Bjørnsen et al, 2017). Previous studies demonstrated that greater knowledge of maintaining good mental health was associated with increased positive help-seeking attitudes (Allouche et al, 2021; Lu et al, 2021). Educational programs or interventions for mental health promotion showed a positive relationship between the maintenance of positive mental health and help-seeking attitudes (Ashoorian et al, 2019; Hunt et al, 2019; E.…”

“…Eighty (68%) independent data sets involved 110,740 participants from the general population, including community residents (e.g., Doll et al, 2022), students (e.g., Gorczynski & Sims-Schouten, 2022), and online recruitments (e.g., Fox et al, 2021). Eleven (9%) involved 2,927 patients or people with mental health issues such as schizophrenia (e.g., Hofer et al, 2019), major depression (e.g., Ubesie et al, 2021), and general psychological conditions (e.g., Allouche et al, 2021). Another 18 (15%) involved 4,177 participants with specific selections, such as caregivers of people with mental illness (e.g., S. Werner et al, 2019), medical students (e.g., P. Werner et al, 2020), and veterans (e.g., Williston & Vogt, 2022).…”

“…Starting with identifying a problem, the help-seeking process illustrated the relationship between recognition of mental disorders and help-seeking attitudes (Rickwood et al, 2005). Notably, mental illness stigma (Al-Shannaq & Aldalaykeh, 2023; DeBate et al, 2018), maintenance of positive mental health (Allouche et al, 2021; Lu et al, 2021), and help-seeking efficacy (Liddle et al, 2021; Tomczyk et al, 2020) were associated with recognition of mental disorders and help-seeking attitudes. Thus, these components might be potential mediators in their relationship.…”

“…The role of the maintenance of positive mental health in the relationship between recognition of mental disorders and help-seeking attitudes has been less examined. Recent studies have indicated a positive relationship between recognition of mental disorders and maintenance of positive mental health (Lu et al, 2021; Sequeira et al, 2022), and a positive relationship between maintenance of positive mental health and help-seeking attitudes (Allouche et al, 2021). In the MHL literature, knowledge of positive mental health is a necessary foundation for making purposeful health-promoting decisions (Bjørnsen et al, 2017), and it serves to optimize and maintain good mental health (Kutcher et al, 2016).…”

“…Numerous empirical studies have examined the relationship between MHL and help-seeking attitudes (e.g., Allouche et al, 2021; H. C. Kim, 2021; Lu et al, 2021; Tomczyk et al, 2020).…”