Stigma, help‐seeking, and counseling with African American male college students

Abstract

AbstractThe help‐seeking processes of college students can be impacted by aspects of public stigma, self‐stigma, and mental health literacy. The unique influences of these factors, however, have yet to be explored with African American male college students (AAMCS). Using a sample of 116 AAMCS, the researchers examined changes of variances in AAMCS’ help‐seeking intentions explained by public stigma, self‐stigma, mental health literacy, and self‐construal. Our hierarchical regression analyses revealed public stigma and self‐stigma to account for 13.7% (ΔR2 = 0.137) of variance in predicting help‐seeking intentions of AAMCS. Mental health literacy and self‐construal were not found to be statistically significant in their respective models. The overall hierarchical model accounted for 25.9% of variance in help‐seeking intentions of AAMCS. Implications for counseling practice and future research in help‐seeking are discussed.