Profiles of Mental Health Help-Seeking Barriers in College Students

Many college students meet the criteria for psychiatric diagnosis but are not engaged in treatment. Individual-level barriers to treatment-seeking include stigma, insufficient social support, negative attitudes, and emotional invalidation. How these barriers coexist to impact treatment-seeking intentions and engagement can better inform prevention efforts to improve students' mental health. The present study utilized person-centered data analytic approaches to identify barrier profiles among students and investigated differences in treatment-seeking intentions/engagement across profiles and predictors of profile membership. Undergraduates (N = 743) reported demographics, mental health symptoms, stigma, perceived support, emotional invalidation, attitudes, intentions, and current treatment engagement. Latent profile analysis was used to determine group classifications based on dimensions of social support, stigma, and attitudes toward seeking treatment. A multistep approach was used to identify unique profiles, and subsequent analyses were used to test predictors and outcomes of group membership. Three unique profiles emerged with varying levels of stigma, social support, emotional invalidation, and attitudes. The profile characterized by low stigma, high support, low emotional invalidation, and high attitudes toward treatment had significantly higher treatment-seeking intentions compared to the other two profiles. The profile characterized by high attitudes, strong support, and low stigma reported significantly higher treatment-seeking intentions compared to other profiles. Notably, the remaining profiles displayed both low help-seeking attitudes and high self-stigma, suggesting that these individual-level barriers may be particularly crucial to developing intentions. Future prevention research should focus on designing and evaluating interventions that target stigma and promote mental health literacy.