Emotion dysregulation, help-seeking attitudes, and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms: A structural equation model

Abstract

Objective: Most college students have experienced an adverse event in their lifetime, yet help-seeking rates remain low. This study seeks to understand psychological factors that might contribute to delays in treatment initiation among trauma-affected students. Participants: Our sample consisted of 531 undergraduate students of which 27% scored above the clinical cutoff for PTSD using the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5). Methods: This cross-sectional study explored relationships among help-seeking attitudes, emotion dysregulation, and PTSD symptoms using structural equation modeling. Results: Findings demonstrated that individuals with more severe emotion dysregulation had more severe PTSD symptoms and held more negative attitudes toward seeking help. Conclusions: Individuals who are the most in need of treatment hold attitudes that may impede help-seeking. We discuss clinical implications and ways college counseling centers can maximize outreach and programming efforts to increase treatment initiation and engagement.

Keywords:

• College students
• emotion dysregulation
• help-seeking
• trauma

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States of America and received approval from the IRB of University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Notes

1 To further investigate this claim, we ran a separate SEM that used additional item-level data to model attitudes and stigma as individual latent variables. The final structural model, which included regressions of help-seeking intention on the new stigma and attitudes latent variable as well as the original emotion dysregulation latent variable, suggested less than ideal fit (X²[113] = 396.682, SRMR = .087, CFI = .903, TLI = .844). While not a direct comparison due to the unnested nature of the models, these statistics indicate a poorer fit relative to the model presented in this paper. However, one benefit of conducting this second SEM is that it allowed us to explore the claim that stigma and attitudes about receiving professional psychological services are distinct from help-seeking intentions. Moreover, stigma and attitudes toward seeking professional help had a small, yet significant, correlation (r = -.216), underscoring the importance of considering these constructs separately while planning future studies.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.