African American Women Living with Mental Disorders: Factors Associated with Help Seeking from Professional Services and Informal Supports

Abstract

This study utilized data from the National Survey of American Life to investigate the use of professional services and informal support among Black women with a lifetime mood, anxiety, or substance use disorder. Forty-seven percent combined professional services and informal support, 14% relied on professional services only, 2% used informal support only, and 16% did not seek help. Co-occurring disorders, recent episodes, social networks, marital status, age, and level of education were significantly related to help seeking from professional and informal helpers, demonstrating the importance of both. Targeting interventions in these areas will likely increase treatment effectiveness.

Predictors of Mental Health Service Use by Young Adults: A Systematic Review

“…These socially vulnerable subgroups are also more likely to have a diagnosis of at least one mental disorder, which may, in turn, explain higher service use (66,67). As in previous studies (17,68), gender was a significant predictor of service use across samples. The suggestion is that young women may be more distressed than young men (3) and better at self-monitoring-and thus more likely to share problems with professionals (69).…”

“…However, data related to evaluated need suggested that in clinical samples, diagnosis of a mental disorder was not independently associated with use. The strength of such an association may vary with psychiatric comorbidity and illness severity (17,20,72,73). These results may also reflect the use of diverse self-report inventories, with different cutoff scores determining symptom severity and clinical cases.…”

“…Conflicting findings may, in part, reflect different study populations-for example, clinical and nonclinical samples. Being female, not belonging to a racial-ethnic minority group, and having prior positive treatment experiences are predisposing variables associated with higher service use (4,(15)(16)(17). However, gender and race-ethnicity do not consistently predict service use among young adults with psychiatric diagnoses (18)(19)(20).…”

“…However, study outcomes vary with the type of social support measures utilized; significant associations appear only when perceived quality, rather than available quantity, of social support is measured (13,22). Similarly, both perceived and evaluated need have demonstrated positive associations with service use (17,23,24). However, some evidence suggests that individuals with affective symptoms or substance use disorders may be less likely than others to receive treatment (25)(26)(27)(28)(29).…”

Gendered Manifestations of Depression and Help Seeking Among Men

“…In the first part of the analyses, three separate dependent variables were used. As seen in other studies, examining help-seeking behaviors for depression (Khazanov, Cui, Merikangas, & Angst, 2015;Sosulski & Woodward, 2013;Woodward, Taylor, & Chatters, 2011), the question "Did you ever in your life talk to a professional about your sadness/discouragement/lack of interest?" was used to assess past helpseeking behaviors, specifically for depression.…”