Help seeking behaviour in college students with high help-seeking willingness

Abstract

Objective:To explore the related factors of help-seeking behavior in counseling context,in order to promote the help-seeking behavior of college students who had recognition of their psychological distress and with willingness to seek help.Methods:From 4 universities fully equipped with mental health service,138 students who had demands and willingness to seek psychological help but did not have help-seeking behaviors were selected as the no help-seeking group,and 99 students who had help-seeking behaviors were selected as help-seeking group.They were assessed with the Self-Stigma of Seeking Help Scale(SSOSH),Disclosure Expectation Scale(DES),Self-Efficiency Questionnaire(revised),Perceived Causal Control of Mental Distress Questionnaire(PCCMDQ),and Indirect Help-Seeking Experiences Questionnaire(IHSEQ).Results:The scores of SSOSH,DES anticipated risk,and PCCMDQ were higher [(12.4±3.0) vs.(11.3±4.0),(12.9±3.0) vs.(11.0±3.4),(4.4±0.8) vs.(3.7±1.0);Ps<0.05] and the scores of Self-Efficiency Questionnaire(revised),PCCMDQ and IHSEQ were lower [(27.7±4.2) vs.(30.0±4.0),(0.3±0.5) vs.(0.9±0.8);P<0.001)] in the no help-seeking group than in the help-seeking group.Regression analysis showed that the scores of DES,Self-Efficiency Questionnaire,and IHSEQ entered the regression model of help-seeking behavior(Nagelkerke R2=0.478).Structural equation modeling analysis showed that self-efficiency and anticipated risk played a mediating role between indirect help-seeking experience and help-seeking behavior.The explainable variance of the model was 30.5%,and the indirect effect accounted for 10.4% of total effect.Conclusion:High willingness help-seeking behavior may be related to disclosure expectation risk,self-efficiency,control attribution and indirect help-seeking experience.