Chinese university students’ help-seeking behaviors when faced with mental health challenges

Abstract

Background Mental illnesses and mental health challenges have become increasingly pervasive among Chinese university students. However, the utilization rate of mental health services is low among students. Aims We aimed to explore Chinese university students’ help-seeking behaviors to understand how they deal with mental health challenges and use the results to inform the development of effective mental health promotion initiatives. Methods In this study, we conducted 13 focus group interviews with students in six universities in Jinan, China, including 91 (62%) female students and 56 (38%) male students. We drew on the Theory of Planned Behaviors to guide our thematic analysis to gain a contextual understanding of participants’ accounts on help-seeking. Results Our results have depicted the help-seeking patterns of Chinese university students and show that there are four major behaviors which are self-reliance, seeking support from peers and families, seeking professional support, and accessing virtual mental health care. Conclusion Results from this study can be used to inform the development of mental health literacy programming for students in universities that share similar contexts, and the study has also opened up a new space for using qualitative approaches to study mental health needs and access to care in diverse populations.