First-generation (FG) college students (students for whom neither parent earned a bachelor’s degree) are typically less likely to interact with their instructors and communicate with them by email or ...in person, compared to continuing-generation (CG) students. Qualitative research suggests FG students are less likely to seek help when they need it, and when they do seek help they are more likely to engage in passive help-seeking (e.g., waiting quietly for assistance) as opposed to active help-seeking (e.g., promptly requesting assistance through multiple methods), compared to CG students. The current laboratory study provided students with an opportunity to seek academic and non-academic help and measured whether students engaged in active help-seeking behavior. We also tested whether having a shared identity with a help-provider could increase active help-seeking behavior among FG students. Results showed that FG students were less likely to seek academic help. Among FG and CG students who sought academic help, the intervention had no significant impact on active help-seeking. However, among students seeking non-academic help, active help-seeking behaviors were significantly higher for FG college students assigned a help-provider who signaled a FG identity. In other words, having a shared identity with a help-provider led to more active help-seeking among FG college students seeking non-academic assistance. FG faculty, staff, and student workers who provide non-academic assistance may want to consider self-identifying as FG to increase help-seeking behaviors among FG students struggling to navigate the college environment.
In this virtual special issue, a set of 26 papers previously published in the American Journal of Community Psychology (AJCP), focused on self‐help/mutual aid groups (SH/MAGs), are being curated ...given their significant impact in this domain. SH/MAGs constitute an important component of the community psychology's proposal to address various psychosocial and health problems. The American Journal of Community Psychology has played an important role in exploring the characteristics of self‐help/mutual aid groups in various fields. These articles cover important areas of the study of self‐help/mutual‐aid groups. More specifically, the selected articles address issues such as the definition and key characteristics of self‐help/mutual aid groups, the main fields that are applied, such as mental health, addictions, and disabilities. The article also addresses important issues such as the place of self‐help/mutual aid groups in health systems, the experiential knowledge generated within these groups and the relationship of health professionals with these groups. The aim is this VSI to contribute to contemporary discussion on self‐help/mutual aid groups, their challenges, and their perspectives and to highlight the crucial role that community psychology has in this field.
Highlights
The crucial contribution of self‐help/mutual aid groups in addressing human problems.
Community psychology as a discipline enables our understanding about self‐help/mutual aid groups.
Participatory action research and self‐help/mutual aid groups: a close relationship.
The importance of self‐help/mutual aid groups in the field of addictions.
Challenges and perspectives for self‐help/mutual aid groups in the 21st century and the role of community psychology.
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.
Purpose
Many young people with mental ill-health do not seek support, and developmental growth in self-reliance may be a barrier to help-seeking. Increasing autonomy is a positive developmental task ...for youth and a key aspect of resilience. This study examined the influence of perceived social support and resilience on the previously unexamined relationship between self-reliance and intentions to seek help from informal, professional, and self-help sources for mental health problems.
Methods
An online survey was completed by a representative Australian community sample of 5,203 young people aged 12–25 years (half female), in May–June 2020.
Results
Path analysis showed the hypothesised conceptual model did not fit the data well, but a modified model was a good fit. Higher self-reliance was associated with lower intentions to seek informal and professional help, as expected, but not with greater intentions for self-help. The relationship between self-reliance and informal help-seeking intentions was fully mediated by perceived social support, whereas the relationship between self-reliance and professional help-seeking was also direct. Perceived social support fully mediated the relationship between self-reliance and resilience. Intentions to use self-help were not influenced by variables in the study, but higher self-help intentions were associated with higher professional help-seeking intentions. Associations were consistent across age and gender groups.
Conclusion
The results show the critical role of social support for combating some of the unhelpful aspects of self-reliance for mental health help-seeking in young people. Future research should explore how self-reliance can hinder or be harnessed to facilitate accessing appropriate mental health.
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.
Objective
Primary care physicians (PCPs) often refer patients to psychological services, but help‐seeking factors in the context of behavioral healthcare referral are understudied. This study ...examined perceptions of seeking psychological help for depression by comparing alternative structural equation models derived from the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA).
Method
Internet survey participants (N = 685 US adults, 77% female,
M
age = 45) imagined themselves in a vignette scenario in which they are experiencing depression symptoms and encouraged by a PCP to see a psychologist.
Results
Results supported the indirect model, in which the links between distal help‐seeking factors (i.e., self‐stigma, symptom recognition, perceived effectiveness of treatment) and intention to follow through on the referral to the psychologist were fully mediated by the more proximal TRA factors (i.e., attitudes, subjective norms, etc).
Conclusions
Our findings supported the use of TRA in understanding peoples’ intention to seek psychological help for depression when referred by their PCP.
Objective
Scaling an online screen that provides referrals may be key in closing the treatment gap for eating disorders (EDs), but we need to understand respondents' help‐seeking intentions and ...behaviors after receiving screen results. This study reported on these constructs among respondents to the National Eating Disorders Association online screen who screened positive or at high risk for an ED.
Method
Respondents completed the screen over 18 months (February 9, 2018–August 28, 2019). Those screening positive or at high risk for an ED (n = 343,072) had the option to provide data on help‐seeking intentions (after screen completion) and behaviors (2‐month follow‐up).
Results
Of eligible respondents, 4.8% (n = 16,396) provided data on help‐seeking intentions, with only 33.7% of those reporting they would seek help. Only 7.6% of eligible respondents opted in to the 2‐month follow‐up, with 10.6% of those completing it (n = 2,765). Overall, 8.9% of respondents to the follow‐up reported being in treatment when they took the screen, 15.5% subsequently initiated treatment, and 75.5% did not initiate/were not already in treatment.
Discussion
Preliminary results suggest that among the small minority who provided data, only one‐third expressed help‐seeking intentions and 16% initiated treatment. Online screening should consider ways to increase respondents' motivation for and follow‐through with care.
Objective: This study examined whether self-help (books, websites, mobile apps) increases help seeking for mental health problems among college students by minimizing stigma as a barrier. ...Participants and Methods: A survey was conducted with 200 college students reporting elevated distress from February to April 2017. Results: Intentions to use self-help were low, but a significant portion of students unwilling to see mental health professionals intended to use self-help. Greater self-stigma related to lower intentions to seek professional help, but was unrelated to seeking self-help. Similarly, students who only used self-help in the past reported higher self-stigma than those who sought professional treatment in the past. Although stigma was not a barrier for self-help, alternate barriers were identified. Conclusions: Offering self-help may increase rates of students receiving help for mental health problems, possibly by offering an alternative for students unwilling to seek in-person therapy due to stigma concerns.
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.
•Studied mental health stigma and help-seeking intentions in 722 adolescents.•Younger adolescents are more willing to seek help than older adolescents.•Perceived public stigma predicts help-seeking intentions in adolescents.•Anti-stigma interventions should be delivered at family, school and community level.
Lay-led self-management programmes are becoming widespread in the attempt to promote self-care for people with chronic conditions.
To assess systematically the effectiveness of lay-led ...self-management programmes for people with chronic conditions.
We searched: the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL, The Cochrane Library 2005, Issue 1), MEDLINE (January 1986 to May 2006), EMBASE (January 1986 to June 2006), AMED (January 1986 to June 2006), CINAHL (January 1986 to June 2006), DARE (1994 to July 2006, National Research Register (2000 to July 2006), NHS Economic Evaluations Database (1994 to July 2006), PsycINFO (January 1986 to June 2006), Science Citation Index (January 1986 to July 2006), reference lists and forward citation tracking of included studies. We contacted principal investigators and experts in the field. There were no language restrictions.
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing structured lay-led self-management education programmes for chronic conditions against no intervention or clinician-led programmes.
Two authors independently assessed trial quality and extracted data. We contacted study authors for additional information. Results of RCTs were pooled using a random-effects model with standardised mean differences (SMDs) or weighted mean differences (WMDs) for continuous outcomes.
We included seventeen trials involving 7442 participants. The interventions shared similar structures and components but studies showed heterogeneity in conditions studied, outcomes collected and effects. There were no studies of children and adolescents, only one study provided data on outcomes beyond six months, and only two studies reported clinical outcomes.
Health status: There was a small, statistically-significant reduction in: pain (11 studies, SMD -0.10 (95% confidence interval (CI) -0.17 to -0.04)); disability (8 studies, SMD -0.15 (95% CI -0.25 to -0.05); and fatigue (7 studies, SMD -0.16 (95% CI -0.23 to -0.09); and small, statistically-significant improvement in depression (6 studies, SMD -0.16 95% CI -0.24 to -0.07). There was a small (but not statistically- or clinically-significant) improvement in psychological well-being (5 studies; SMD -0.12 (95% CI -0.33 to 0.09)); but no difference between groups for health-related quality of life (3 studies; WMD -0.03 (95% CI -0.09 to 0.02). Six studies showed a statistically-significant improvement in self-rated general health (WMD -0.20 (95% CI -0.31 to -0.10). Health behaviours: 7 studies showed a small, statistically-significant increase in self-reported aerobic exercise (SMD -0.20 (95% CI -0.27 to -0.12)) and a moderate increase in cognitive symptom management (4 studies, WMD -0.55 ( 95% CI -0.85 to -0.26)). Healthcare use: There were no statistically-significant differences between groups in physician or general practitioner attendance (9 studies; SMD -0.03 (95% CI -0.09 to 0.04)). There were also no statistically-significant differences between groups for days/nights spent in hospital (6 studies; WMD -0.32 (95% CI -0.71 to 0.07)). Self-efficacy: (confidence to manage condition) showed a small statistically-significant improvement (10 studies): SMD -0.30, 95% CI -0.41 to -0.19. No adverse events were reported in any of the studies.
Lay-led self-management education programmes may lead to small, short-term improvements in participants' self-efficacy, self-rated health, cognitive symptom management, and frequency of aerobic exercise. There is currently no evidence to suggest that such programmes improve psychological health, symptoms or health-related quality of life, or that they significantly alter healthcare use. Future research on such interventions should explore longer term outcomes, their effect on clinical measures of disease and their potential role in children and adolescents.
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