Older Adults' Help-Seeking Attitudes and Treatment Beliefs Concerning Mental Health Problems

Abstract

Objectives-Older adults with mental health problems are especially unlikely to seek professional mental health services. It is not clear, however, whether their help-seeking attitudes and treatment beliefs contribute to this problem. The objectives of this study were to compare older adults' attitudes and beliefs to younger adults' and to examine the influence of age on these variables after controlling for other demographic variables, prior help-seeking, and mental disorders.Methods-We analyzed cross-sectional data from Part II of the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. This dataset includes 5,692 community-dwelling adults, including 1,341 who were 55 years of age and older. Participants responded to three questions assessing attitudes toward seeking professional mental health services and one question examining beliefs about the percentage of people with serious mental health concerns who benefit from professional help. We used logistic regression to predict positive versus negative attitudes and beliefs from age, gender, education, and race/ethnicity, as well as prior help-seeking and mood and/or anxiety disorder diagnosis.Results-Overall, more than 80% of participants exhibited positive help-seeking attitudes and more than 70% reported positive treatment beliefs. In contrast to the modest effect of age on beliefs, adults 55 to 74 years of age were approximately two to three times more likely to report positive helpseeking attitudes than younger adults.Conclusions-Older adults' positive attitudes and treatment beliefs are unlikely barriers to their use of mental health services. This finding, which is consistent with recent positive views of aging, suggests that enabling resources and need factors are more likely explanations for older adults' low rates of mental health service use. Keywordshelp-seeking attitudes; treatment beliefs; mental health service utilization National epidemiologic surveys from Australia (1), Europe (2), and the United States (3) suggest that 12% to 30% of community dwelling individuals have met criteria for a mental disorder in the past year and that 25% to 50% have had one in their lifetimes. In contrast to these high rates of mental health problems, these surveys have also highlighted strikingly low rates of mental health service use, with 65% to 80% of individuals with diagnosable mental health problems not receiving professional help. Despite evidence that mental health service NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript utilization is on the rise, the majority of people with mental disorders still do not receive treatment (3). Furthermore, certain demographic groups, notably older adults, remain especially unlikely to seek professional help (4,5).Considerable attention has been directed to reducing the tremendous gap between the need for and use of mental health services. Mental health commissions in both the United States (6) and Canada (7) were recently created to provide recommendations for improving the mental health systems in thes...

The use of healthcare services for mental health problems by middle-aged and older adults

“…Furthermore, the participants seldom reported fear of being stigmatized as a reason for not seeking help. These results are in line with recent findings, which indicate that older adults are progressively open to mental health treatment, displaying positive attitudes towards help seeking (Mackenzie, Scott, Mather, & Sareen, 2008;Mohlman, 2012;Segal, Coolidge, Mincic, & O'Riley, 2005). Nevertheless, the likelihood of seeking help for mental health problems still decreased with age.…”

Treatment satisfaction, perceived treatment effectiveness, and dropout among older users of mental health services

“…A study examining service use among older and younger adults found that older adults rated the mental health treatment they received as very beneficial and this did not differ significantly from younger adults (Karlin, Duffy, & Gleaves, 2008). Similarly, studies examining older adults' attitudes towards services and beliefs about their effectiveness have found that they did not differ significantly from younger adults' (Mackenzie, Scott, Mather, & Sareen, 2008;Robb, Haley, Becker, Polivka, & Chwa, 2003).…”

Caractéristiques des appelants réguliers utilisateurs de deux centres d'écoute ou d'intervention téléphonique du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean :

“…Les préjugés et les moyens financiers étant les deux principales barrières face à la recherche d'aide concernant des problèmes de santé mentale (Gould & al., 2012 ;Pitman & Osborn, 2011), les services d'aide téléphonique remédient à ces obstacles de par la gratuité et l'anonymat des services. Mackenzie et al (2008) (Putman, 2008).…”