Understanding Aotearoa New Zealand University Students Intentions to Seek Help If Experiencing Mental Distress: A Comparison of Naturalistic and Interventional Findings

Andre Mason (), Grace Johnstone, Benjamin C. Riordan, Celia Lie, Charlene Rapsey, Gareth J. Treharne, Kyungho Jang, Sunny C. Collings and Damian Scarf ()
Additional contact information
Andre Mason: Department of Psychology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand
Grace Johnstone: Department of Psychology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand
Benjamin C. Riordan: Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC 3086, Australia
Celia Lie: Department of Psychology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand
Charlene Rapsey: Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand
Gareth J. Treharne: Department of Psychology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand
Kyungho Jang: Department of Psychology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand
Sunny C. Collings: Faculty of Health, Victoria University, Wellington 6012, New Zealand
Damian Scarf: Department of Psychology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 23, 1-12

Abstract: University students globally are consistently identified as a vulnerable group for mental distress and suicide. Despite this, students report low engagement in help-seeking behaviours. This series of studies aimed to assess barriers to help-seeking for students and the impact of an intervention that sought to increase support-seeking intentions. In Study 1, 373 undergraduate psychology students completed items related to depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, stigma, and help-seeking intentions. In Study 2, 133 undergraduate psychology students were randomly allocated into one of three intervention groups (control, infographic, video) and completed measures as used in Study 1. Despite experiencing clinically relevant symptoms and recent suicidal ideation, students in Study 1 tended to report low intentionality to seek help, citing perceptions that their distress was not serious enough or a desire to handle their issues independently. In Study 2, an infographic about different support services increased student’s intentions to access support services and reduced their perception that their issues were not serious enough. Overall, Aotearoa New Zealand students endorsed similar barriers to help-seeking as students in other countries. Importantly, we demonstrated that a simple infographic intervention reduced perceptions regarding these common barriers and may increase students’ knowledge about when to seek help.

Keywords: mental distress; help-seeking barriers; suicidal ideation; university students (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/23/15836/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/23/15836/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:23:p:15836-:d:986583

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().