Honor and Seeking Mental Health Services: The Roles of Stigma and Reputation Concerns

Abstract

Prior research has indicated the extent to which living in a culture of honor can elicit aggressive behaviors in response to insult. Recent work has extended this research to the realm of mental health, with research demonstrating that honor endorsement is linked with decreased utilization of mental health resources due to social concerns that the stigma of psychological help-seeking will reflect poorly on one’s reputation. However, measurements of both the mechanism proposed by the extant literature (reputation concern) and individual-level psychological help seeking intentions were not addressed by previous researchers. In order to address this gap in the literature, the current study of 156 participants located in a Southern U.S. state utilized measures of both reputation concern and psychological help-seeking intentions to clarify the relationship between honor endorsement and the stigma of mental health care utilization. Results from path analysis provided further support to the propositions formulated by prior researchers, in that honor endorser’s reputation concerns appear to fuel stigmatization, which ultimately leads to lower intention to seek psychological services. These findings, in conjunction with prior work, demonstrate the importance of considering individual differences in honor endorsement as an influential factor in understanding the utilization of psychological health resources.