High School Students Professional Psychological Help Attitude And Its Operational Effectiveness, The Relationship Between Social Support

People like to seek psychological counseling to psychologists or psychological staffs to solve their own psychological problems when meeting all aspects of psychological problems in life, this kind of individual’s inherent tendency is called the attitude toward seeking professional psychological help. Both domestic and international studies found that the related factors with people’s attitude toward seeking professional psychological help include such psychological factors as self-efficacy, self-esteem, self-disclosure, demographic variables like gender, different origins of students, etc. as well as cultural factors. High school students, being at the unbalanced state of physical and mental development, unstable emotions and feelings of puberty, may face a lot of stress situation, which might result in a variety of psychological conflicts and emotional distress, and may even evolve into neurosis like anxiety, depression, etc. Then professional psychological help will be a positive and effective way to help students in trouble successfully deal with the difficulties, solve psychological distress, and promote mental health. Previous studies have confirmed that coping efficacy and social support have a close relationship respectively with attitude toward seeking professional psychological help. However, none of the researches have directly examined the relationships among coping efficacy, social support and attitude toward seeking professional psychological help.Using attitude toward seeking professional psychological help scale, coping efficacy scale and social support rating scale, this study investigated the relationship among attitude toward seeking professional psychological help, coping efficacy and social support of high school students, and tested the partial mediating effect of social support in coping efficacy and attitude toward seeking professional psychological help. The participants were600high school students from one Foreign Language School (high school) and an ordinary school in Xi’an. The results of which can provide the theoretical basis for mental health education in secondary schools to promote the virtuous circle between students’coping efficacy, social support and positive psychological help attitude, so that more students with psychological problems can take the professional mental health service agencies from schools and communities initiatively, and ultimately improve the effectiveness and pertinence of mental health education at school.Through analysis and discussion of the research foundings, this study draw the conclusions as follows:1. There are demographic differences in the attitude toward seeking professional psychological help of high school students, with the girls showed more actively than the boys, Grade one students’attitude is more positive than Grade two and Grade three, students from city are more positive than the countryside, attitude of only child is more positive than that of non-only child, and attitude of students majoring in liberal arts is more positive than students majoring in science.2. The overall situation of high school students’coping efficacy is good, but relatively lower compared with college students. Among which, their competency perceptions and cognitive level are higher than confidence level.3. There are significant demographic differences in social support of high school students, with the social support obtained by female students was significantly higher tthan male students, grade three students got more social support than grade one and two, students from urban area got more social support than rural students. There were no significant differences in the factors of only-child or non-only child and different majors.4. Attitude toward seeking professional psychological help of high school students showed significant positive correlation with their coping efficacy and social support, coping efficacy and social support are found to be significant positive predictors of attitude toward seeking professional psychological help.5. The social support of high school students has partial mediating effect in coping efficacy and attitude toward seeking professional psychological help.