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A Prospective Study on Structural and Attitudinal Barriers to Professional Help-Seeking for Currently Untreated Mental Health Problems in the Community

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Abstract

To date, little is known about the concurrent impact of structural and attitudinal factors on help-seeking behaviour for mental health problems. Therefore, this study investigated a longitudinal German community sample of adults with currently untreated mental health problems (N = 188, mean age = 50.34, 70.7% female) regarding perceived structural (e.g. accessibility) as well as attitudinal barriers (e.g. anticipated self-stigma) to help-seeking intentions and behaviour. Overall, perceived accessibility, spatial and temporal distance from mental health services predicted help-seeking. Among attitudinal factors, treatment efficacy beliefs were strongly connected to help-seeking. In addition, among people who knew where to find a psychologist or psychotherapist, anticipated self-stigma emerged as a significant barrier to help-seeking. Therefore, creating positive treatment expectancies and dismantling erroneous perceptions of structural aspects of mental health services hold promise to further close the gap in mental health care utilisation. However, the role of anticipated self-stigma within the help-seeking process requires further research.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Philip Horsfield for helpful suggestions and language editing on an earlier draft of the manuscript.

Funding

This study was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (grant numbers SCHO 1337/4-1 and SCHM 2683/4-1).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Psychology, Department Health and Prevention, University of Greifswald, Robert-Blum-Straße 13, 17487, Greifswald, Germany

    Samuel Tomczyk, S. Schmidt & H. Muehlan

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

    S. Stolzenburg

  3. University of Leipzig, Medical Faculty, Department of Psychiatry, Leipzig, Germany

    G. Schomerus

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  1. Samuel Tomczyk
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  2. S. Schmidt
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  3. H. Muehlan
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  4. S. Stolzenburg
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  5. G. Schomerus
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Samuel Tomczyk.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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The DFG was not involved in either study design, data collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, the writing of the manuscript or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

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Tomczyk, S., Schmidt, S., Muehlan, H. et al. A Prospective Study on Structural and Attitudinal Barriers to Professional Help-Seeking for Currently Untreated Mental Health Problems in the Community. J Behav Health Serv Res 47, 54–69 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11414-019-09662-8

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