Attitude towards Seeking Professional Psychological Help in a Sample of Pre-service Teachers

Abstract

The attitude toward seeking professional psychological help is an important concept in the literature related to psychological help-seeking behaviors. The present study aimed to investigate the attitudes of pre-service teachers toward seeking psychological help. Data was collected from 143 university students from the Faculty of Education. Construct was assessed using the abbreviated Turkish form of the scale “Attitudes Toward Seeking Psychological Help (ASPH-S)” and a personal information form created by the researcher was utilized in order to obtain demographic and personal data. A general pattern of reluctance for help seeking was illustrated in the descriptive statistical results. No gender difference was found with respect to Attitude towards seeking psychological help. Attitude towards seeking psychological help had a significant correlation with age in the negative direction. Age correlated positively with actual history of professional psychological help and presence of educational experience about psychological help. Presence of educational experience about psychological help correlated positively with history of professional psychological help. Year in university correlated positively with presence of educational experience about psychological help. Income level correlated negatively with history of professional psychological help. The results and future implications are discussed.