Mental health literacy and help-seeking: the mediating role of self-stigma and emotional intelligence

When faced with mental health concerns, help-seeking can be a useful means to seek and receive help from formal support sources-such as mental health professionals, as well as informal support sources-such as friends and family. Both the intention and tendency to engage in formal help-seeking are predicted by mental health literacy, self-stigma, and emotional intelligence; however, the role that each of these factors play in relation to informal help-seeking is less clear. The current study examined the predictive value of mental health literacy with respect to both formal and informal help-seeking intentions. Additionally, the current study explored the role of self-stigma and emotional intelligence as possible mediators of these relationships. Undergraduate students (<i>n</i> = 301) were recruited from a Western Canadian university and completed a series of online questionnaires measuring their formal and informal help-seeking intentions, mental health literacy, self-stigma faced when seeking help, and meta-mood, as an operationalization of emotional intelligence. Results indicated that mental health literacy was a significant positive predictor of formal help-seeking intentions, and that both self-stigma and meta-mood partially mediated this relationship. Furthermore, results showed that mental health literacy did not serve as a significant predictor of informal help-seeking, although mental health literacy did have a significant indirect effect on informal help-seeking, through the mediation of meta-mood. The importance of self-stigma and meta-mood in relation to mental health literacy are highlighted in terms of formal help-seeking outcomes, and the implications of these findings for informal help-seeking are discussed.