Internalized Stigma and Help-Seeking Across Problems and Targets

Mental health difficulties have been on the rise in recent years. Self-disclosure of mental health symptoms is related to a range of positive outcomes, and seeking help for mental health can be life-saving. Help-seeking for one's mental health can be impacted by a variety of factors, such as the help-seeking target (e.g., friend, family member, or professional source) and the presenting problem (e.g., a personal emotional problem vs suicidal ideation). Internalized stigma of mental illness can impede help-seeking; however, it is not known if internalized stigma impedes (1) only certain types of problems or (2) help-seeking only from certain targets. It was hypothesized that the relationship between internalized stigma and willingness to seek help would vary based on (1) help-seeking target and (2) whether someone is seeking help for a personal emotional problem or suicidal thinking. Utilizing a sample of undergraduate students and a sample recruited through Prolific of adults with a history of help-seeking for mental health, bifactor models were run with stigma included as a manifest variable predicting willingness to seek help for suicidal ideation and personal emotional problems (each included as general factors) from three types of targets (friends/intimate partners, family members, and professional sources, each included as specific factors). Results indicate that internalized stigma negatively predicts willingness to seek help for suicidal thinking across targets and negatively predicts willingness to seek help for personal/emotional problems from friends/intimate partners and family members, but not from professional targets. These findings demonstrate that the relationship between internalized stigma and willingness to seek help is not uniform across help-seeking targets and presenting problems.