A Prospective Study on Structural and Attitudinal Barriers to Professional Help-Seeking for Currently Untreated Mental Health Problems in the Community.

Publisher: Springer Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 9803531 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1556-3308 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 10943412 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Behav Health Serv Res Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: 2006- : New York, NY : Springer
Original Publication: Northbrook, IL : Thousand Oaks, CA : Association of Behavioral Healthcare Management ; Sage Publications, c1998-

Attitude to Health* ; Help-Seeking Behavior*; Health Services Accessibility/*statistics & numerical data ; Mental Disorders/*psychology; Adult ; Aged ; Female ; Germany ; Humans ; Longitudinal Studies ; Male ; Mental Health ; Middle Aged ; Prospective Studies ; Social Stigma

To date, little is known about the concurrent impact of structural and attitudinal factors on help-seeking behaviour for mental health problems. Therefore, this study investigated a longitudinal German community sample of adults with currently untreated mental health problems (N = 188, mean age = 50.34, 70.7% female) regarding perceived structural (e.g. accessibility) as well as attitudinal barriers (e.g. anticipated self-stigma) to help-seeking intentions and behaviour. Overall, perceived accessibility, spatial and temporal distance from mental health services predicted help-seeking. Among attitudinal factors, treatment efficacy beliefs were strongly connected to help-seeking. In addition, among people who knew where to find a psychologist or psychotherapist, anticipated self-stigma emerged as a significant barrier to help-seeking. Therefore, creating positive treatment expectancies and dismantling erroneous perceptions of structural aspects of mental health services hold promise to further close the gap in mental health care utilisation. However, the role of anticipated self-stigma within the help-seeking process requires further research.

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Date Created: 20190606 Date Completed: 20201029 Latest Revision: 20210121

20240628

10.1007/s11414-019-09662-8

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