Personal and perceived public mental‐health stigma as predictors of help‐seeking intentions in adolescents

Abstract

This study aimed to determine predictors of help-seeking intentions for symptoms of depression/ anxiety and self-harm in adolescents. It focused on personal and perceived public stigma to gather data of value for the design of anti-stigma interventions. Participants (n = 722; 368 girls) were recruited from three cohorts of secondary school students in Ireland (mean ages: 1st = 12.9 years; 3rd = 14.9 years; 5th = 16.6 years). Hierarchical regression models indicated that perceived public stigma is a significant unique predictor of help-seeking intentions for depression [F (4, 717) = 13.4, p < .001] and self-harm [F(4, 717) = 13.5, p < .001]. This indicates that young people's beliefs about other people's stigma towards mental health problems was a stronger predictor of help-seeking intentions than their own stigma beliefs. These findings highlight the importance of looking separately at different types of stigma when investigating the role of stigma in predicting help-seeking intentions.

Dominant Cultural and Personal Stigma Beliefs and the Utilization of Mental Health Services: A Cross-National Comparison

“…For example, Vogel et al (2007) have shown that the effect of public stigma on the utilization of mental health services operates through self-stigma. Nearchou et al (2018) find that help-seeking intentions in adolescents are more affected by public stigma beliefs than their personal stigma beliefs.…”

“…In contrast to the aforementioned studies, we do not conceptualize cultural stigma beliefs as individual perceptions of what the "generalized other, " or "most people" believe (Pattyn et al, 2014), nor do we approach them as the perceived attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral dispositions of the general population, which are often referred to as "public stigma" (Corrigan and Shapiro, 2010;Pescosolido, 2013;Nearchou et al, 2018). The cross-national, multi-level design of our study allows us to draw a distinction between the prevailing stigma beliefs within a country and the beliefs of individuals by aggregating individuals' beliefs at the country level.…”

“…They further state that the power of stigma emerges within a cultural system as a "set of cognitive and evaluative beliefs-beliefs about what is or what ought to be-that are shared by the members of a social system and transmitted to new members" (House, 1981, p. 542) cited in Link and Phelan (2014). These shared beliefs differ from an individual's negative attitudes and stereotypes about persons with mental health problems, called personal stigma beliefs (Nearchou et al, 2018). Pescosolido et al (2008) explicitly refer to both the individual and the contextual influences of stigma.…”

What are the barriers, facilitators and interventions targeting help-seeking behaviours for common mental health problems in adolescents? A systematic review

“…In contrast, younger adolescents had greater knowledge about professional sources of help [34]. Only one study found a significant difference between ages regarding help-seeking, with younger adolescents reporting higher intentions of seeking help [60].…”

What are the barriers, facilitators and interventions targeting help-seeking behaviours for common mental health problems in adolescents? A systematic review

“…Seven studies did not find significant differences between genders [28-39-40-42-46-51-69]. One study reported higher help-seeking intentions in males experiencing suicidal intentions [60] and two studies found that females perceived more overall barriers . However, this may be related to higher rates of females seeking help for mental health problems compared to males [31-33-37-42-48-53-58-61-76].…”