Background: College years represent a critical phase on young peoples lives, consequently the increasing of mental illness risk can not be ignored. Depression stigma has been considered a significant barrier both in treatment, rehabilitation, and help-seeking behaviours of people diagnosed with depression. With this study we aimed to understand the effects of age, gender, previous health care and PHQ-4 scores on depression stigma, and to analyze the effects of depression stigma on help-seeking attitudes.
Methods: A total of 969 participants with a mean age of 18.87 (SD=1.49) ranging between 16 and 25 were included in this study and completed the DSS, the Attitude Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help, the General help-Seeking questionnaire, the PHQ-9 questionnaire and a socio-demographic questionnaire. Data was analysed using SPSS 24.0.
Results: Gender and previous experience with mental health care services are significant predictors of stigma and help-seeking attitudes. Personal stigma has a significant effect on help-seeking attitudes. PHQ-4 scores play a role on personal depression stigma and on perceived stigma, however no direct effect from PHQ-4 on help-seeking attitudes was detected.
Conclusions: Personal depression stigma has an important effect on help-seeking attitudes. Literacy promotion may decrease personal depression stigma and increase professional help seeking intensions.