The current study examined the relationship between belief-based barriers to seeking professional mental health care and help-seeking intentions in a sample of 1037 adolescents. From early adolescence to adulthood, for males and females, the need for autonomy was a strong barrier to seeking professional mental health care. Help-seeking fears were weaker in the older age groups. Having lower perceived need for autonomy and believing that prior mental health care was helpful was significantly associated with higher intentions to seek future professional mental health care. Implications for prevention and overcoming barriers to seeking mental health care are suggested.

Copyright © 2010 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd

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Psychology Progress Current Research Summary March 17, 2013

Dr Coralie Wilson

Help-negation

A special focus of Dr Wilson’s ongoing help-seeking research program is to identify and understand the mechanisms that drive the help-negation process. Help-negation refers to the process of help avoidance or withdrawal that, prior to Dr Wilson’s PhD research, had only been found in clinical samples or related specifically to mental health services. In the 14 years that Dr Wilson’s help-negation research program has been running, she has established the process in samples with low and severe levels of general psychological distress,common mental disorders, alcohol and other drug use disorders, and suicidal thinking.

As lead or sole author, Dr Wilson has extended the help-negation process to informal sources such as parents and friends, community gatekeepers such as teachers, youth workers and religious leaders, and to a range of different primary and secondary mental health services.She has established that the help-negation process is different for different disorders and a function to varying extent of different available help sources. She has also established that the process is not completely explained as a function of sex, hopelessness, lack of prior help, poor results of earlier help seeking, no current desire for help, religious affiliation, attitudes towards counselling, social problem-solving skills, or co-occurring psychological symptoms (See Wilson, Bushnell, and Caputi, (2011). Early Intervention in Psychiatry, 5 (Suppl. 1), 34-39, for a review)

These research findings, together with findings from the featured study and battery of recent findings from Dr Wilson’s research program, suggest that biological and developmental processes (e.g., individuation, need for autonomy), when combined with actually being mentally and/or medically unwell, may have greater influence on reluctance to seek help for a mental health or medical problem than beliefs or other pure psychological processes.

Most mental health help-seeking promotion initiatives focus on changing attitudes or beliefs.  Dr Wilson’s recent research findings challenge the relevance of this singular focus. Her research program provides strong evidence that initiatives to improve in prevention and early intervention must always account for all components of the bio-psycho-social model, concurrently, in all interventions that focus on improving help-seeking and mental or medical health.

Dr Coralie Wilson is a Behavioural Health Scientist, the Academic Leader for Personal and Professional Development in the Graduate School of Medicine at the University of Wollongong (UOW), and an Expert Advisor for the Lifeline Australia Foundation for Suicide Prevention. An overview of her research program can be found at http://www.uow.edu.au/gsm/staff/UOW028294.html

Results described above are soon to be published in a series of academic articles that are co-authored by Associate Professor Peter Caputi (UOW), Professor David Kavanagh (Queensland University of Technology), Professor Dan Lubman (Monash University), Dr Emma Barkus (UOW), Dr Susan Thomas (UOW), Ms Anna Cavanagh (UOW), Ms Taneile Kitchingman (UOW), Mr Robert Cox (UOW), and Mr Alexander Svenson (UOW).

Dr. Coralie Wilson