Religious Attitudes and Fear Toward Traditional Biomedical and Psychological Services Among People of the Christian Faith

Adults who identify as Christian often seek help within their religious communities for mental health issues. Research suggested that religious counseling services may discourage members from reporting mental health issues to traditional biomedical and psychological providers. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the extent to which people who identify as Christian in Southern California seek help outside of the Church and whether their help seeking is influenced by their religious attitudes and perceived fear of traditional psychological services. Southern California was chosen as it is where the Christian Counseling movement was started and has a large population of Christians. Heider’s theory of attribution and Kelley’s covariation model were used as the theoretical frameworks. A survey design was used to collect data from 128 adults using the Pathways Questionnaire to measure religious attitudes, the Thoughts About Psychotherapy Survey to measure perceived fear, and the Mental Help-Seeking Intention Scale to measure delay of mental illness reporting. The results of a Hayes PROCESS model 4 mediation analysis indicated the total effect of religious attitudes on delay of mental illness reporting mediated by perceived fear to be significant and negative, although the amount of variance accounted for was small. The indirect effect of perceived fear was negative and nonsignificant. Religious attitudes negatively predicted delay of mental illness reporting, and positively predicted perceived fear. The results may promote positive social change to encourage religious communities to support their parishioners to seek mental health services when experiencing distress and challenges.