Self-Stigma, Public-Stigma and Attitudes towards Professional Psychological Help: Psychometric Properties of the Greek Version of Three Relevant Questionnaires

People are often reluctant to seek psychological help, mainly because they perceive help-seeking as a potential threat to their self-esteem. There is a need for cross-culturally valid instruments to assess attitudes, public- and self- stigma, which seem to play a critical role in seeking mental health treatment. We examined the factor structure, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, as well as the construct, criterion and discriminant validity of the Greek version of three questionnaires – the Attitudes towards Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale-Short Form (ATSPPH-SF; Fischer and Farina 1995); the Stigma Scale for Receiving Psychological Help (SSRPH; Komiya et al. 2000); and the Self stigma of Seeking Help Scale (SSOSH; Vogel et al. 2006) – in accordance with the original studies. EFA was used to explore the factor structure of the questionnaires in a sample of 1381 Greek University students. The resulting models were subjected to CFA to further test the latent structures. The data showed acceptable model fit for all three questionnaires. The internal consistency of the ATSPPH-SF was α = .76 and the 1-month test-retest reliability was .89 (N = 35). The internal consistency of the SSOSH and the SSRPH were α = .77 and α = .69, respectively. The discriminant and criterion validity of the SSOSH were satisfactory. Men reported higher SSRPH, SSOSH and ATSPPH scores than women. These differences remained significant after controlling for age. This study offers evidence to suggest that the Greek versions of the three questionnaires have acceptable psychometric properties. The data support the suitability and usefulness of the Greek versions of the three scales for assessing self-stigma, public-stigma and attitudes towards seeking psychological help. Compared with men, women perceived less public-stigma and self-stigma, and more favorable attitudes to seeking psychological help.