Factors affecting mental health service use among university students following an episode of mass violence.

Abstract

Episodes of mass violence can increase mental health (MH) symptoms among survivors, possibly leading to increased MH service use. Within the context of an episode of mass violence that impacted a university community, we prospectively explore the predisposing (demographics, clinical levels of MH symptoms, victimization history, objective exposure, and social support), enabling (MH stigma, prior MH service use,), and need (MH symptoms, current social support) variables that influence posttragedy MH service use. In the original study, 593 students completed surveys at 2 time points during their first year of college. After the tragedy, students were invited to participate in a post event survey for a final sample of n = 142. A total of 14.3% of our sample accessed MH services post event. Results indicate that demographic factors were not related to MH service use. When examined jointly in a logistic regression, the final model suggests that prior MH service use and greater objective exposure were related to posttragedy MH service use. Other predisposing, enabling, and need factors were not associated with MH service use. Prior experience with MH services may help survivors engage in services following a disaster. As disaster MH service models tend to target outreach to those with the greatest exposure, this may be why those survivors had greater MH service use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).