Emerging mental disorders in a community sample of young adults in Italy: help-seeking in a Generalist Community Mental Health setting

Aim. Delays in the admission to care of young adults with emerging mental disorders represent one of the current major concern in psychiatry. This delay, often experienced in clinical practice, has several determinants. One of these is "unexpressed help-seeking" that is influenced by cultural and historical backgrounds and by the characteristics of the disorder itself, but most of all by the way community mental health services are developed. The aims are to identify: level of stress and mental unease and main determinants of unexpressed help-seeking within a community sample of young adults in a national contest of generalist community mental health model. Methods. the sample is made up of 3,446 university students. An explorative questionnaire together with SVS (Stress related Valuation Scale) for the assessment of subjective stress and GHQ-12 for the evaluation of mental health status were given. A descriptive analysis was carried out followed by correlations between unexpressed help-seeking variable and other variables. A logistic regression was carried out on the subsample with GHQ-12 >= 4 utilizing "non help-seeking" as a dependent variable. Results. 46.8% of the sample had a GHQ-12 >= 4 score. The amount of unexpressed help-seeking is equal to 63.6% and ends up being significantly correlated to: male sex, nonresident student, high SVS score, absence of Youth Mental Health Services, distrust manifested in relation to existing Services. Conclusions. A modification of the Community Mental Health Services in the sense of setting up more appropriate contexts for young users, could lead to a reduction of unexpressed help-seeking.