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Mothers’ and Fathers’ Reluctance to Seek Psychological Help for Their Children

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Abstract

We investigated the gap between parents’ willingness to seek help for their children and their willingness to refer other parents to help, and the relationship of this gap to gender. Two hundred and eleven parent couples with elementary-school children reported their willingness to seek help from professional and informal sources for a hypothetical problem with their child, and their willingness to refer a friend’s child with an identical problem to similar help. Attitudes toward help seeking and parental behaviors were also measured. Findings revealed that parents were more willing to refer a friend’s child to professional help than they were to seek such help for their own child, although no gap was found regarding informal help. No gender differences were found regarding willingness to seek help or to refer another, although gender was related to variables that predicted help seeking.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Amiram Raviv, Keren Sharvit & Shiran Rosenblat-Stein

  2. Department of Statistics and OR, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Alona Raviv

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  1. Amiram Raviv
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  2. Keren Sharvit
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  3. Alona Raviv
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  4. Shiran Rosenblat-Stein
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Correspondence to Amiram Raviv.

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Raviv, A., Sharvit, K., Raviv, A. et al. Mothers’ and Fathers’ Reluctance to Seek Psychological Help for Their Children. J Child Fam Stud 18, 151–162 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-008-9215-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-008-9215-0

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