An investigation of college student-athletes’ mental health stigma, help-seeking attitudes, depression, anxiety, and life stress scores using structural equation modeling

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the directional relationship between student-athletes’ (N = 621) degree of mental health stigma, help-seeking attitudes, and levels of depression, anxiety, and life stress. The results of the structural equation model (SEM) analyses identified that student-athletes’ amount of mental health stigma contributed to help-seeking attitudes (25.6% of the variance), but not levels of depression (.16% of the variance), anxiety (.09% of the variance), or life stress (.81% of the variance). Specifically, student-athletes’ mental health stigma shared a strong negative relationship with attitudes towards seeking psychological help (β = −.506, p < .001) and the mediation models identified that personal stigma mediates the relationship between public stigma and help-seeking attitudes. Implications purport the need to address the stigma of mental health at the societal level in order to mitigate personal stigma and promote a positive sport culture surrounding mental health and health help-seeking within athletes.

KEYWORDS:

• Anxiety
• depression
• help-seeking attitudes
• intercollegiate athletics
• life stress
• mental health stigma
• structural equation modeling
• student-athletes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the American Athletic Conference (AAC) Research Grants. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the AAC.

Notes on contributors

Saundra M. Tabet

Saundra M. Tabet is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Counseling & Marital and Family Therapy at the University of San Diego. Her research investigates the stigma of mental illness in sport culture and mechanisms for reducing its prevalence. In addition, her scholarly work focuses on scale development, instrument validation, and therapeutic outcome measures in counseling.

Glenn W. Lambie

Glenn W. Lambie serves as the Associate Dean for Graduate Affairs and Faculty Excellence and The Robert N. Heintzelman Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair at the University of Central Florida. He is a Professor of Counselor Education and served as the Chair for the Department of Child, Family, and Community Sciences (2014-2018). His areas of research interests include counselor education and supervision, professional school counseling, therapeutic interventions and scale development.

Nedeljko Golubovic

Nedeljko Golubovic is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Counseling & Marital and Family Therapy at the University of San Diego. The primary goal of his research is further exploration of substance use/addiction issues and trauma. More specifically, he is interested in assessing the intersection between addiction and trauma and examining the consequences of stigmatization and bias.