Intention to seek help among three categories of substance-using college students: which factors matter?

ABSTRACT

Background: The current study examined which promising help-seeking factors accounted for unique variance in help-seeking intention among substance-using college students. Participants included 8,416 substance-using college students from a USA national sample.

Methods: Three separate logistic regressions were conducted to predict help-seeking intention among varying categories (i.e., marijuana, alcohol, and polysubstance) of substance-using college students.

Results: Tests of the full models against constant only models were statistically significant for all models, which indicated that the predictors collectively distinguished between substance-using college students who intended to seek help and those who did not. Wald criteria indicated that perceived treatment effectiveness, perceived need for psychological help, and perceived knowledge of mental illness made significant unique contributions to help-seeking intention for all three groups. Perceived public stigma was not a significant predictor of help-seeking intention in all models and personal stigma was not a significant predictor among the alcohol-using college students.

Conclusion: These findings provide evidenced-based rationale for prioritizing these factors among substance-using college students.

KEYWORDS:

• Substance use
• help seeking
• stigma
• college
• alcohol

Informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

Disclosure of potential conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.