The effect of a psychoeducational video on university students’ professional psychological help-seeking attitudes and mental health stigma: The role of gender and gender roles

Psychological problems are becoming more and more common, and people’s knowledge about seeking professional mental help is limited. The question of “how to change people’s knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors on seeking professional mental help positively” hasn’t been studied in Turkish literature. For this purpose, researchers developed a psychoeducational material and implemented it in a sample of university students. There are 161 participants who were undergraduate students at a university (83 females and 78 males). A quasi-experimental pre-test, post-test study was designed. Firstly, participants filled out Attitudes Towards Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale-Short Form (ATSPPH-SF), Attribution Questionnaire-27 (AQ-27), Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI), Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), and Demographic Information Form, and afterwards they watched the psychoeducational material. One week later, as a post-test measurement, participants were asked to fill out ATSPPH-SF and AQ-27 again in order to look for the effect of the psychoeducational material. A mixed ANCOVA showed that psychoeducational material had changed feminine and masculine female participants’ help seeking attitudes after controlling for prior support history and symptomatic distress, while for males there were no statistically significant change. Moreover, psychoeducational material had a statistically significant effect on some of the sub-factors of mental health stigma. While the psychoeducational material had some effect for feminine and masculine females, gender-oriented content may be used to increase the effectiveness of psychoeducation videos for males. Further, such materials can be used in schools, educational programs, and workplaces to positively influence people's knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding professional help-seeking attitudes and mental health stigma.