Seeking professional help in health crises: The impact of cognitive factors, discrete emotions, and eHealth information seeking on mental health communication

A common challenge facing public health practitioners and communication scholars is how to best change perceptions and increase favorable attitudes and awareness of health recommendations, such as help-seeking about depression. Given the need to identify persuasive ways to communicate depression, this study examined how discrete emotions, cognition, and engaging eHealth information-seeking behavior affected US adults' intentions regarding help-seeking about depression. The results from an online survey of 1422 US adults revealed (1) elated emotion and loving emotion; (2) depression consciousness; (3) attitude toward seeking help from mental health services; and (4) eHealth information-seeking significantly predicted intention to seek help from professionals. In addition, depression consciousness, attitude toward seeking help from mental health services, and eHealth information-seeking acted as sequential mediators for the relationship between elated emotion, loving emotion, and behavioral intention. Implications for health communication and depression communication research and practice are discussed.