Association Between Attitudes Toward Mental Illness and Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Help Among College Students

Objective: To analyze the relationship between attitudes toward mental illness and attitudes toward seeking professional help among college students.

Methods: From January to April 2023, a cluster sampling method was used to select classes of a university in Tianjin as groups, and a simple random sampling method was used to select all college students from 3 of the 7 classes as research objects. The general information questionnaire, the Mental Illness Attitude Questionnaire, and the Attitude Towards Professional Psychological Help Seeking Scale-Short Version were used to conduct the survey. We explored the correlation between the scores of the Mental Illness Attitude Questionnaire and the Attitude Towards Professional Psychological Help Seeking Scale-Short Version, and analyzed the influencing factors of college students’ attitude toward seeking professional psychological help.

Results: The Mental Illness Attitude Questionnaire scores of college students were positively correlated with the Attitude Towards Professional Psychological Help Seeking ScaleShort Version scores (r=0.658, P=.001). In the final univariate analysis, it was found that sex, major, psychological distress, and attitude toward mental illness to be the factors influencing college students’ attitude toward seeking professional psychological help.

Conclusion: College students’ attitude toward mental illness directly affects their attitude toward seeking professional help, and sex, major, and psychological distress also influence attitude toward seeking professional help.

Cite this article as: Li J. Association between attitudes toward mental illness and attitudes toward seeking professional help among college students. Alpha Psychiatry. 2024;25(5):661-666.