Increasing Help-Seeking Intentions for Mental Health Difficulties in Early Adolescence: The Role of Cumulative Promotive Factors

Abstract

AbstractDespite evidence to suggest that receiving support for mental health difficulties can improve later outcomes, adolescents often do not seek help when needed. While factors that reduce the likelihood of help-seeking intentions are well established, little is known about the factors that may increase adolescents’ intentions to seek help. This study sought to identify promotive factors for general help-seeking intentions, as well as help-seeking intentions from formal and informal sources specifically, and to test the assumptions of cumulative promotion theory in relation to help-seeking. Participants comprised 290 early adolescents (aged 11–14) in Northwest England who completed a suite of online measures assessing their mental health, wellbeing, and help-seeking intentions. Candidate promotive factors were modelled, and a cumulative promotive index (CPI) score was generated for each participant. Hierarchical regression was used to analyse the data. A range of promotive factors were identified for help-seeking intentions. CPI scores were significant predictors of all three help-seeking outcomes, even after accounting for the variance explained by the individual promotive factors. Thus, this study confirms two key tenets of cumulative promotion theory in relation to help-seeking intentions amongst adolescents: (1) as the number of promotive factors increases, intentions to seek help for mental health difficulties also increase, and (2) the number of promotive factors is more important than their nature when increasing help-seeking intentions.