Abstract
<p style="text-align:justify">People have needed mental health services more and more during Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Due to the contagious nature of the COVID-19 virus, online counseling has been preferred more during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who need such mental health services might take actions to seek help by demanding psychological assistance from psychological counselors or mental health institutions. However, these people might avoid seeking and receiving such help when they think that they have a weak personality or they somehow will be criticized by the society or experience social stigma because they seek psychological help. This study aims to examine the mediating role of self-disclosure between attitudes towards online counselling and perception of social stigma due to receiving psychological help. Participants of the study consist of 519 adults who live in Turkey and are older than 18 years old. The data for the study were collected through “Distress Disclosure Index”, “Online Counseling Attitudes Scale (OCAS)”, “Stigma Scale for Receiving Psychological Help (SSRPH)” and “Personal Information Form”. The hypothetical model developed in order to determine whether self-disclosure mediates in the relationship between perception of social stigma due to receiving psychological help and online psychological counselling attitudes was tested through SEM (Structural Equation Modeling). The results of the study revealed that self-disclosure play partial mediating role between perception of social stigma and value of online counselling and discomfort with online counselling.</p>
Highlights
Having emerged in China in December 2019 first and spread worldwide in a short time, Coronavirus disease (COVID19) pandemic has considerably affected mental health of people all over the world
The measurement model regarding the mediating role of self-disclosure between social stigma and value of online counselling and discomfort with online counselling was tested by using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
When mediating variable is included in the model, it is seen that the effect between social stigma and value of online psychological counselling (β = -.15, p .01) and discomfort with online counselling (β = .24, p < .001) decreases
Summary
Having emerged in China in December 2019 first and spread worldwide in a short time, Coronavirus disease (COVID19) pandemic has considerably affected mental health of people all over the world. People are experiencing higher levels of fear, anxiety and stress (Rajkumar et al, 2020). It is not possible to perform religious or cultural rituals for deaths caused by COVID-19, and people cannot utter their final farewell words to their beloved ones when they die and have to postpone or cancel their mourning (Wallace et al, 2020). The uncertainties about the illness, insufficient information about it, fear of losing beloved ones and lack of control on the developments during COVID-19 pandemic have triggered anxiety problems and certain fears for many individuals (Brooks et al, 2020). People have needed mental health services more and more during this period
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