Background:
Despite the high prevalence of mental health disorders worldwide, a significant proportion of distressed individuals do not seek professional help. Digital technology can be a potential ...bridge to reduce the treatment gap for mental disorders. A systematic review was undertaken to examine the technology-based interventions aimed at improving help-seeking attitude, intention, or behavior for mental health concerns.
Methods:
The literature search was conducted in January–February 2020 through various e-databases using relevant keywords that targeted help-seeking interventions for mental health disorders via different technology modes.
Results:
21 studies (15 randomized controlled trials and six non-randomized studies) were reviewed. The included studies were published between April 2006 to February 2020. Majority of the interventions led to an increase in the help-seeking variables. The crucial role of online delivery, participant involvement, and embedded links to professional services in encouraging help-seeking is highlighted. The review emphasizes the need for understanding utility of multicomponent interventions with personalized elements targeting help-seeking behavior, particularly in low-middle-income countries, and studies involving longer duration follow-ups.
Conclusion:
This systematic review is the first of its kind to examine technology-based interventions to improve help-seeking for mental health and suggests that such interventions play a crucial role in positively impacting help-seeking. The complex interplay between the relevant variables such as mental health literacy, stigma, help-seeking attitude, intention and behavior, and the intervention components that may have a differential bearing on these variables are issues that merit urgent attention in further research.
Objective
This paper demonstrates that localized and chronic stop‐question‐and‐frisk (SQF) practices are associated with community members’ utilization of emergency department (ED) resources. To ...explain this relationship, we explore the empirical applicability of a legal epidemiological framework, or the study of legal institutional influences on the distribution of disease and injury.
Data and Study Design
Analyses are derived from merging data from the Philadelphia Vehicle and Pedestrians Investigation, the National Historical Geographic Information System, and the Southeastern Philadelphia Community Health database to zip code identifiers common to all datasets. Weighted multilevel negative binomial regressions measure the influence that local SQF practices have on ED use for this population. Analytic methods incorporate patient demographic covariates including household size, health insurance status, and having a doctor as a usual source of care.
Principal Findings
Findings reveal that both tract‐level frisking and poor health are linked to more frequent use of hospital EDs, per respondent report. Despite their health care needs, however, reporting poor/fair health status is associated with a substantial decrease in the rate of emergency department visits as neighborhood frisk concentration increases (IRR = 0.923; 95% CI: 0.891, 0.957). Moreover, more sickly people in high‐frisk neighborhoods live in tracts that have greater racial disparities in frisking—a pattern that accounts for the moderating role of neighborhood frisking in sick people's usage of the emergency room.
Conclusions
Findings indicating the robust association reported above interrogate the chronic incompatibility of local health and human service system aims. The study also provides an interdisciplinary theoretical lens through which stakeholders can make sense of these challenges and their implications.
In the modern workplace, it is virtually impossible to succeed without seeking any help from others. Despite its widely recognized importance, several areas surrounding help‐seeking have not yet been ...clearly understood in the organization literature. Specifically, it is unclear whether seeking help always benefits employees in need, and how various work demands drive help‐seeking behavior in different ways. In this research, we drew from the dual‐type view of help‐seeking (i.e., autonomous and dependent help‐seeking) and the challenge‐hindrance stressors framework to elaborate how seeking help of different types influences employees’ work competence‐related outcomes in various directions, what work demands drive employees to seek different types of help, and when encountering work demands is particularly influential on their help‐seeking tendencies. Evidence from a field study (Study 1) showed that while challenge stressors increased employees’ autonomous help‐seeking, hindrance stressors increased dependent help‐seeking especially for employees with greater workflow centrality. Moreover, autonomous help‐seeking benefited help‐seekers’ job performance ratings through increased self‐perceived competence, whereas dependent help‐seeking hurt their job performance via decreased perceived competence by coworkers. To cross‐validate our findings, we then examined and replicated our core findings with three experimental vignette studies (Studies 2, 3a, and 3b). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Objective(s)
To assess the prevalence of personal experiences of mental health problems among clinical psychologists, external, perceived, and self‐stigma among them, and stigma‐related concerns ...relating to disclosure and help‐seeking.
Method
Responses were collected from 678 UK‐based clinical psychologists through an anonymous web survey consisting of the Social Distance Scale, Stig‐9, Military Stigma Scale, Secrecy Scale, Attitudes towards Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale‐Short Form, alongside personal experience and socio‐demographic questions.
Results
Two‐thirds of participants had experienced mental health problems themselves. Perceived mental health stigma was higher than external and self‐stigma. Participants were more likely to have disclosed in their social than work circles. Concerns about negative consequences for self and career, and shame prevented some from disclosing and help‐seeking.
Conclusions
Personal experiences of mental health problems among clinical psychologists may be fairly common. Stigma, concerns about negative consequences of disclosure and shame as barriers to disclosure and help‐seeking merit further consideration.
Abstract The study explores adolescents' attitudes toward seeking help for emotional problems. The personal service gap is examined by asking adolescents about their willingness to refer themselves ...and others to formal (psychologists) and informal (friends) help sources, using a within-subjects design. The study included 662 Israeli adolescents in the 10th and 12th grades. The results indicate that adolescents refer peers more than themselves to a psychologist and to a friend. They are also more willing to refer themselves and peers to a friend rather than to a psychologist. Barriers to seeking psychological help are explored and significant correlations between perceptions of psychological benefit, problem severity and barriers to help seeking are described. Recommendations for increasing adolescents' awareness and use of help sources are suggested.
Background and Aims
Multiple studies have examined barriers and facilitators to help‐seeking, but the prevalence of help‐seeking for problem gambling (PG) is not well established. We aimed to ...estimate the international prevalence of help‐seeking for PG among the general population and among subgroups of people at risk for PG (i.e. low‐risk, moderate‐risk and PG).
Methods
Systematic search of grey literature (through gambling repositories, gambling research institutes and Google) and peer‐reviewed literature (through ProQuest, PsycINFO, PubMed and Scopus) for gambling prevalence studies that reported on help‐seeking for PG. This review adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta‐Analyses. Studies used representative sampling methods to determine the prevalence of gambling participation and data collection 2010 onward. Twenty‐four studies met the inclusion criteria. The main outcome was population prevalence of help‐seeking for PG. Help‐seeking was defined as any intentional action to change gambling behaviours, including professional services (inclusive of in‐person or distance help), non‐professional help (e.g. from family and friends) and self‐help. Subgroup analyses were conducted to explain variability in help‐seeking prevalence estimates.
Results
Measurement of help‐seeking was inconsistent across included studies and, overall, there was high risk of bias. We estimated a general population help‐seeking prevalence for PG of 0.23% (95% CI, 0.16–0.33). Prevalence estimates were significantly higher in studies assessing lifetime (0.50%; 95% CI, 0.35–0.71) compared with current help‐seeking (0.14%; 95% CI, 0.10–0.20, P < 0.001), but there was no evidence of difference in prevalence estimates by gambling participation, region, type of help‐seeking, or year of data collection. Compared with people with low‐risk gambling (0.27%; 95% CI, 0.07%–1.04%), prevalence estimates were significantly higher in those with moderate‐risk (3.73%; 95% CI, 2.07%–6.63%) and problem gambling (20.63%; 95% CI, 12.89%–31.35%, P < 0.001).
Conclusions
One in 25 moderate‐risk gamblers and 1 in 5 people with problem gambling have sought help for problems related to their gambling.
This study examined self‐stigma of seeking psychological help and mental health literacy as predictors of college students’ (N = 1,535) help‐seeking attitudes, with additional attention to ...psychological and demographic correlates. Results indicated that mental health literacy predicted help‐seeking attitudes above and beyond self‐stigma. Asian American race/ethnicity, male gender, current psychological distress, and help‐seeking history were also significant predictors. Implications for addressing mental health literacy and self‐stigma while attending to demographic and psychological variations in help seeking are discussed.
Purpose
This systematic review aims to synthesise the evidence on behavioural and attitudinal patterns as well as barriers and enablers in Filipino formal help-seeking.
Methods
Using PRISMA ...framework, 15 studies conducted in 7 countries on Filipino help-seeking were appraised through narrative synthesis.
Results
Filipinos across the world have general reluctance and unfavourable attitude towards formal help-seeking despite high rates of psychological distress. They prefer seeking help from close family and friends. Barriers cited by Filipinos living in the Philippines include financial constraints and inaccessibility of services, whereas overseas Filipinos were hampered by immigration status, lack of health insurance, language difficulty, experience of discrimination and lack of acculturation to host culture. Both groups were hindered by self and social stigma attached to mental disorder, and by concern for loss of face, sense of shame, and adherence to Asian values of conformity to norms where mental illness is considered unacceptable. Filipinos are also prevented from seeking help by their sense of resilience and self-reliance, but this is explored only in qualitative studies. They utilize special mental health care only as the last resort or when problems become severe. Other prominent facilitators include perception of distress, influence of social support, financial capacity and previous positive experience in formal help.
Conclusion
We confirmed the low utilization of mental health services among Filipinos regardless of their locations, with mental health stigma as primary barrier, while resilience and self-reliance as coping strategies were cited in qualitative studies. Social support and problem severity were cited as prominent facilitators.
Crime victims are left with multiple decisions to make in an effort to cope with and recover from their experiences being criminally victimized. For example, victims must decide if they are going to ...report their victimization experience to law enforcement and/or if they are going to seek help from various resources, both informal and professional entities. Research on the reporting or help-seeking behaviors of cyberstalking victims is limited, but necessary to ensure that these victims are receiving the help they need. Using self-report survey data collected from a sample of 477 cyberstalking victims, this study sought to identify the characteristics of the cyberstalking victimization experience that are associated with the victim’s decision to report the victimization to law enforcement, seek professional help, and seek informal help. Specifically, borrowing from Gottfredson and Gottfredson’s theory of decision making, the current study explored how measures of offense seriousness and the victim–offender relationship are associated with cyberstalking victims’ reporting and help-seeking behaviors. The findings revealed that cyberstalking victims who experienced more serious offenses had increased odds of engaging in reporting and both types of help-seeking behaviors. Furthermore, victims who were cyberstalked by their current intimate partner had greater odds of engaging in reporting and professional help-seeking behaviors. As this study is just one of many that are needed to gain a better understanding of the reporting and help-seeking behaviors of cyberstalking victims, directions for future research are provided.
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