Adolescent trust and primary care: Help‐seeking for emotional and psychological difficulties

Abstract

Although a quarter of adolescents are likely to experience emotional and psychological difficulties, only a third of them will seek professional help. In this exploratory study we undertook focus groups with 54 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 16 in eight postprimary schools in Northern Ireland. Young people do not trust their GPs, perceiving them as strangers, impersonal and uncaring. The basis of distrust is different among males and females. The findings are discussed in light of adolescents' developmental challenges of identity formation and the consequent demand to be respected and taken seriously by adults.

Help-Seeking Measures and Their Use in Adolescents: A Systematic Review

“…This would be of interest for future help-seeking interventions due to differences in physical and emotional changes and coping strategies between these age groups. Younger adolescents may struggle with social, biological and hormonal changes (Currie et al 2001) and fear being infantilized by mental health services (Corry and Leavey 2017), while older adolescents may be challenged with school examinations (Currie et al 2001) and view help-seeking as a threat to their newly-established sense of autonomy (Richardson et al 2014). It would be beneficial to explore which stage of adolescence is most receptive to the breaking down of help-seeking barriers in order to maximize the success of future interventions.…”

“…This finding places economically vulnerable adolescents at risk as they are otherwise unwilling to speak with formal sources of help (Leavey et al 2011). Investigations into why adolescents may be unwilling to engage in formal help-seeking have uncovered barriers such as fears of unfriendly clinicians, the fear of receiving a "stigmatizing" mental health diagnosis, and the fear of being treated "like a child" by clinicians (Rickwood et al 2007;Zachrisson et al 2006;Corry and Leavey 2017). Barriers to informal help-seeking have also been identified such as fearing negative judgment from friends and family (Gulliver et al 2010).…”

“…The second issue identified is the lack of a clear definition of what help-seeking as a research area encompasses. While help-seeking involves a number of topics such as attitudes towards clinicians and fearing negative judgment from others (Rickwood et al 2007;Zachrisson et al 2006;Corry and Leavey 2017), no previous review has attempted to identify and synthesize the multiple facets of help-seeking behavior and the measures available to assess these factors. The review argues that greater clarity is needed regarding the multiple facets of help-seeking behavior and the measures available to assess these facets.…”

Adolescents’ Views on Seeking Help for Emotional and Behavioral Problems: A Focus Group Study

“…Previous studies provided a breadth of knowledge on help-seeking for mental health issues or other specific issues. Furthermore, most of these studies focused on a specific help source used a quantitative approach [6][7][8]10,22]. This qualitative study aims to add to previous studies by exploring in-depth interpretations into adolescents' views on help-seeking for emotional and behavioral issues This study considered help sources and issues for help-seeking bottom-up with a broad focus on potentially all types of help sources and problems, including the internet as a relatively new and less well-studied source of help.…”

Perspectives from primary health care providers on supporting adolescents and young adults with chronic conditions transitioning to adult care: A descriptive qualitative study

“…Barriers to engaging AYAs with chronic conditions may exacerbater discontinuous primary care, but are not uncommon to this age group in primary care. (19,55,(59)(60)(61)(62) Primary care providers often report a lack of adolescent training, which may interfere with their ability to engage individuals in this age group. (61-63) Some work suggests AYAs with chronic conditions prefer to access their specialists for certain aspects of their healthcare (e.g., sexual health, mental health) and perceive family physicians as not equipped to manage these issues.…”