Psychological Help Seeking And Its Affecting Factors Of College Students

Only a proportion of university students suffering from mental health problems receive counseling services. A body of overseas literature has addressed the demographic, psychological and social psychological variables that distinguish those that use university counseling services from those that do not. It is important to study some factors how to affect help seeking behaviors in details. However, we can get no idea of multitudinous variables how to affect help seeking together. And more important, it is not suitable to generalize the finds based on western sample to Chinese ones. Consequently, it is not only possible but also necessary to investigate the features and affecting factors of help seeking of Chinese university students.The method of this survey is mainly questionnaire. We tested 400 college students in Wuhan. First we analyzed college students how to cope and from whom seeking help when they encounter psychological problem. Second, to explore the predictors of psychological help seeking behavior and help seeking will, we conducted a standard multiple regression. Finally, we use SEM to explain the role of efficacy in the decision of whether seeking help from professional at the moment.The finding indicate that:1. Most of students would take positive measures to cope with psychological problems. However, there still a quarter of students handle psychological problems with negative coping styles.2. If the students who suffering psychological problems had decided to seek help, most of them would select friend as the first choice, then lover and family, the final choice is counselor and teacher.3. Women students were significantly more likely to seek help than men and receive counseling.4. Significantly positive correlation was found between help seeking andfamily culture circumstance. The same relation was found between help seeking and family economic condition.5. If students come across psychological problems in future, research has indentitled a number of factors that contribute to their help seeking attitude, including the locus of mental health control, concern with social stigma of counseling, the counseling client behavior efficacy. Internal locus of control has been related to positive attitudes toward seeking help from professionals. The concern with social stigma of counseling was a great barrier keeps students from seeking help from professionals. The greater the efficacy of counseling client, the greater chance seeking help from professional.6. Research has indentitled a number of factors that contribute to at the moment help seeking will, including the locus of mental health control, concern with social stigma of counseling, counseling client behavior efficacy, at the moment emotion and handle psychological problem efficacy. External locus of control positively associated with at the moment seeking help will but negatively associated with seeking help behavior. This relationship can be explained partially by the negative relevance between locus of control, at the moment emotion and handle psychological problem efficacy. This need further research. Significantly negative correlation was found between at the moment help seeking will and handle psychological efficacy. The better at the moment emotion, the less seeking help from professionals will. There are some factors affect future help seeking will and at the moment help seeking will in the same way, including concern with social stigma of counseling and counseling client behavior efficacy.7. Result from SEM indicate that the decision of whether seeking help from professionals when encounter mental health problem was affected by many factors together. There are relevance among those factors. Efficacy plays an important role in the decision of whether seeking help from professional.