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Why Is It So Hard to Get Help? Barriers to Help-Seeking in Postsecondary Students Struggling with Mental Health Issues: a Scoping Review

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Abstract

Mental illness and other subclinical mental health issues are a significant and growing problem for postsecondary students. Despite the availability and benefits of mental health services on university and college campuses across North America, many students still do not seek help. This scoping review explores the barriers to mental health help-seeking facing postsecondary students in Canada and the USA. A total of 24 journal articles were identified after searching two multidisciplinary databases. This review comprehensively summarizes the barriers to help-seeking behaviors for post-secondary students. Barriers to help-seeking experienced by students existed on the institutional, sociocultural, and personal levels. Institutional factors included access to university/college mental health services, insurance coverage, and usability of services. Further research is required to develop an understanding of all the barriers and their relation to one another.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Population Medicine, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    Paige Dunley & Andrew Papadopoulos

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  1. Paige Dunley
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  2. Andrew Papadopoulos
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Correspondence to Paige Dunley.

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Appendix

Appendix

Exclusion criteria

• Not conducted in Canada or a culturally similar region of the USA (northern coastal regions)

• Full article available in English

• Relevant—about barriers to help-seeking for postsecondary students

• Inclusion of public universities (private universities in the USA are functionally different from those in Canada)

• Not published within the last 10 years

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Dunley, P., Papadopoulos, A. Why Is It So Hard to Get Help? Barriers to Help-Seeking in Postsecondary Students Struggling with Mental Health Issues: a Scoping Review. Int J Ment Health Addiction 17, 699–715 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-018-0029-z

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