Mental Health Attitudes and Beliefs in a Community Sample on the Central Coast in Australia: Barriers to Help Seeking

Abstract

There continues to be call for greater community awareness actions and strategies to reduce stigma and enhance mental health literacy nationally and internationally. To identify local barriers to help-seeking and perceptions around stigma, we developed a 'mental health attitudes and beliefs' survey which was administered at a range of community events on the Central Coast in New South Wales, Australia. The aim was for the results of this survey to inform the development of strategies that enhance local help-seeking behaviours that are sensitive to the role of age, gender and Indigenous status. People who approached our Mental Health Information stall were invited to complete the survey and 282 individuals completed the survey. The data was analysed descriptively with a focus on comparing subgroups based on age, gender, Indigenous status, and previous service access or experience of mental illness. Cost, stigma and mental health literacy were found to be prominent barriers to help-seeking for the overall cohort; however, the ways in which or extent to which these barriers impact on help seeking varied between subgroups. A discussion of these differences and their implications for practice is the focus of this paper.

Attitude Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Among Community-Dwelling Population in China

“…They are rich in life experience and more deeply influenced by Chinese culture (66), making them feel that they have abilities to solve problems and are not willing to seek help. This perspective contrasts with that of younger people who suffer from more mental problems caused by various stresses related to maladaptation, so their demand for professional psychological help is higher than that of older people (67,68). Moreover, younger people easily obtain more information about mental health from school, the workplace, or the Internet, thus they have a better attitude toward the value of professional help (34).…”

“…Consistently, stigma was cited as a negative factor affecting professional psychological help-seeking attitude (10,76,77). On one hand, people with personal stigma may hide their thoughts to avoid addressing emotional problems, as they would feel uncomfortable, ashamed, and embarrassed to talk about these with professionals (67). Another issue is related to how the public labels individuals with mental disorders as "sick, neurotic," so individuals are fearful of being laughed at and discriminated against when seeking professional psychological help (78).…”

Men’s Dropout From Mental Health Services: Results From a Survey of Australian Men Across the Life Span

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While men and women have been reported to experience mental health issues at equal rates (Smith et al, 2018), men are a third less likely to access help when they need it (Coates et al, 2019;Harris et al, 2015;Yousaf et al, 2015). The prevailing narrative that men are loathe to seek help has stimulated empirical work exploring men's attitudes, intentions, and experience of stigma when it comes to engaging with mental health services (Addis & Mahalik, 2003).

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Public perceptions on using Virtual Reality and Mobile Apps in Anxiety treatment

“…Figure 7b shows these responses ranging significantly across the scale with almost equal proportions responding from 2 to 6. This is interpreted as an overall positive response, considering that common barriers such as cost and stigma can be reduced by using a mobile app (Coates et al, 2019). Here, our respondents demonstrate a likelihood to use an available mobile app as their first point of contact in getting help.…”