Attitudes and Intentions to Seek Professional Psychological Help for Personal Problems or Suicidal Thinking

Abstract

Only a small proportion of people who experience psychological distress seek professional psychological help. Treatment fearfulness, psychological distress, and attitudes toward counselling are potential factors associated with peoples' tendency to seek or avoid mental health treatment. The present study investigated the extent to which these variables were able to predict help-seeking attitudes and intentions in an older nonclinical university student sample. Attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help predicted help-seeking intentions in two dimensions: personal-emotional problems and suicidal thoughts. While research suggests that suicidal people rarely seek help, subjects indicated that they would be highly likely to seek help if they felt suicidal, even more likely than if they only had other “personal” problems. Social stigma fears also predicted attitudes toward help-seeking. The results are discussed in relation to educational approaches for reducing treatment fearfulness and the potential for increasing appropriate professional help-seeking.