Predicting help-seeking behavior: The impact of knowing someone close who has sought help

Abstract

Objectives: This study sought to replicate and extend research on social facilitators of college student's help seeking for psychological problems.

Participants: We collected data on 420 ethnically diverse college students at a large public university (September 2008-May 2010).

Methods: Students completed a cross-sectional online survey.

Results: We found that students who were aware of close others' (eg, family, friends) help seeking were two times more likely to have sought formal (eg, psychologist) and informal (eg, clergy) help themselves. Tests of moderation revealed the incremental effect (ie, controlling for help-seeking attitudes, internalizing symptoms, cultural demographics) of close others' formal help seeking was strong and significant for men (R² = 0.112), while it was negligible and nonsignificant for women (R² = .002).

Conclusions: We discuss the importance for students-particularly men-to learn about close others' help seeking for facilitating their own help seeking during times of distress.

Keywords: Help seeking; men & masculinity; mental health literacy; psychological symptoms.