Mental Health Help-Seeking Intentions and Preferences of Rural Chinese Adults

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Abstract

Purpose

We aimed to investigate mental health help-seeking intentions and preferences of rural Chinese adults and determine predictors of the intentions.

Methods

A total of 2052 representative rural residents aged 18–60 completed a cross-sectional survey by face-to-face interviews. The survey included seven questions asking about respondents’ help-seeking intentions and preferences, and a series of internationally validated instruments to assess self-perceived health status, depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, mental health literacy, and attitudes towards mental illness.

Results

Nearly 80% of respondents were willing to seek psychological help if needed, and 72.4% preferred to get help from medical organizations, yet only 12% knew of any hospitals or clinics providing such help. A multivariate analysis of help-seeking intention revealed that being female, having lower education, higher social health, higher mental health knowledge, and physical causal attribution for depression were positive predictors of help-seeking intention.

Conclusion

A huge gap exists between the relatively higher intention for help-seeking and significantly lower knowledge of helpful resources. Predictors of help-seeking intention for mental problems in the current study are consistent with previous studies. Interventions to increase help-seeking for mental problems by Chinese rural adults may be best served by focusing on increasing public awareness of help sources, as well as improving residents’ mental health literacy and social health, with special focus on males and those more educated.

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Most cited references 45

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Mental illness stigma, help seeking, and public health programs.

Sara Evans-Lacko, Graham Thornicroft, Claire Henderson (2013)

Globally, more than 70% of people with mental illness receive no treatment from health care staff. Evidence suggests that factors increasing the likelihood of treatment avoidance or delay before presenting for care include (1) lack of knowledge to identify features of mental illnesses, (2) ignorance about how to access treatment, (3) prejudice against people who have mental illness, and (4) expectation of discrimination against people diagnosed with mental illness. In this article, we reviewed the evidence on whether large-scale anti-stigma campaigns could lead to increased levels of help seeking.

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"Mental health literacy": a survey of the public's ability to recognise mental disorders and their beliefs about the effectiveness of treatment.

A Jorm, A E Korten, P A Jacomb … (1997)

To assess the public's recognition of mental disorders and their beliefs about the effectiveness of various treatments ("mental health literacy"). A cross-sectional survey, in 1995, with structured interviews using vignettes of a person with either depression or schizophrenia. A representative national sample of 2031 individuals aged 18-74 years; 1010 participants were questioned about the depression vignette and 1021 about the schizophrenia vignette. Most of the participants recognised the presence of some sort of mental disorder: 72% for the depression vignette (correctly labelled as depression by 39%) and 84% for the schizophrenia vignette (correctly labelled by 27%). When various people were rated as likely to be helpful or harmful for the person described in the vignette for depression, general practitioners (83%) and counsellors (74%) were most often rated as helpful, with psychiatrists (51%) and psychologists (49%) less so. Corresponding data for the schizophrenia vignette were: counsellors (81%), GPs (74%), psychiatrists (71%) and psychologists (62%). Many standard psychiatric treatments (antidepressants, antipsychotics, electroconvulsive therapy, admission to a psychiatric ward) were more often rated as harmful than helpful, and some nonstandard treatments were rated highly (increased physical or social activity, relaxation and stress management, reading about people with similar problems). Vitamins and special diets were more often rated as helpful than were antidepressants and antipsychotics. If mental disorders are to be recognised early in the community and appropriate intervention sought, the level of mental health literacy needs to be raised. Further, public understanding of psychiatric treatments can be considerably improved.

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Help-seeking and access to mental health care in a university student population.

Daniel Eisenberg, Ezra Golberstein, Sarah E. Gollust (2007)

University students represent an important population in which to study access to mental health care. Understanding their unmet needs will enhance efforts to prevent and treat mental disorders during a pivotal period in life. To quantify mental health service use and estimate how various factors are associated with help-seeking and access in a university student population. A Web-based survey was administered to a random sample of 2785 students attending a large, public university with a demographic profile similar to the national student population. Nonresponse bias was accounted for using administrative data and a nonrespondent survey. Mental health was measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire screens for depressive and anxiety disorders. Mental health service utilization was measured as having received psychotropic medication or psychotherapy in the past year. Of students with positive screens for depression or anxiety, the proportion who did not receive any services ranged from 37% to 84%, depending on the disorder. Predictors of not receiving services included a lack of perceived need, being unaware of services or insurance coverage, skepticism about treatment effectiveness, low socioeconomic background, and being Asian or Pacific Islander. Even in an environment with universal access to free short-term psychotherapy and basic health services, most students with apparent mental disorders did not receive treatment. Initiatives to improve access to mental health care for students have the potential to produce substantial benefits in terms of mental health and related outcomes.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Soraya Seedat: Role: Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS ONE

Journal ID (publisher-id): plos

Journal ID (pmc): plosone

Title: PLoS ONE

Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )

ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203

Publication date (Electronic): 6 November 2015

Publication date Collection: 2015

Volume: 10

Issue: 11

Electronic Location Identifier: e0141889

Affiliations

[1 ]Department of Social Medicine and Health Management, School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha City, Hunan Province, China

[2 ]Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

University of Stellenbosch, SOUTH AFRICA

Author notes

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Conceived and designed the experiments: SYX LZ. Performed the experiments: YY ZWL MH HML. Analyzed the data: YY ZWL JPY. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YY ZWL MH. Wrote the paper: YY ZWL MH HML JPY LZ SYX.

* E-mail: xiaosy@ 123456csu.edu.cn

Article

Publisher ID: PONE-D-15-14367

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0141889

PMC ID: 4636424

PubMed ID: 26545095

SO-VID: e7d67cf7-2909-4fc7-adb2-4ac812413359

License:

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

History

Date received : 2 April 2015

Date accepted : 14 October 2015

Page count

Figures: 0, Tables: 3, Pages: 16

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science and Technology Support Program, China (No. 2009BAI77B01 2009BAI77B08) and Hunan Provincial Innovation Foundation for Postgraduate, No.CX2015B058.

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Data Availability All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Mental Health Help-Seeking Intentions and Preferences of Rural Chinese Adults

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Abstract

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PLOS Global Public Health

Most cited references 45

Mental illness stigma, help seeking, and public health programs.

"Mental health literacy": a survey of the public's ability to recognise mental disorders and their beliefs about the effectiveness of treatment.

Help-seeking and access to mental health care in a university student population.

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