Help-seeking Skills Research Articles

Improving mental health literacy as a strategy to facilitate early intervention for mental disorders

Good mental health literacy in young people and their key helpers may lead to better outcomes for those with mental disorders, either by facilitating early help-seeking by young people themselves, or by helping adults to identify early signs of mental disorders and seek help on their behalf. Few interventions to improve mental health literacy of young people and their helpers have been evaluated, and even fewer have been well evaluated. There are four categories of interventions to improve mental health literacy: whole-of-community campaigns; community campaigns aimed at a youth audience; school-based interventions teaching help-seeking skills, mental health literacy, or resilience; and programs training individuals to better intervene in a mental health crisis. The effectiveness of future interventions could be enhanced by using specific health promotion models to guide their development.

Individual differences in graduate students' help-seeking process in using a computer coach in problem-based learning

There is a scarcity of research regarding help seeking in the context of computer learning environments providing on-demand help, a context in which help-seeking skills appear critical for learning [Aleven, V., Stahl, E., Schworm, S., Fisher, F., & Wallace, R. (2003). Help seeking and help design in interactive learning environments. Review of Educational Research, 73 (3), 277–320]. Whereas a cognitive model of help seeking has been suggested and tested in this context [Mercier, J., & Frederiksen, C. H. The structure of the help-seeking process in using a computer coach in problem-based learning. Computers and Education, submitted for publication], individual differences remained to be studied from this perspective. Participants were 18 graduate students, who solved a challenging statistics problem in pairs, with the help of a computer coach providing on-demand help. Log linear analyses found individual differences in help seeking with respect to (a) its relative importance in problem solving, (b) the relative importance of its component processes, (c) the modulation of help seeking over a series of sub-tasks, and (d) the relationship between help seeking and the quality of the solutions that the student elaborated. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Connecting Youth in Foster Care with Needed Mental Health Services

This article examines how adolescents seek out help for their mental health problems by providing an overview of the research from the health and social service literature. The main goal of the paper is to explore the concept of adolescent's help-seeking in relation to the foster care experience. Two models of help-seeking and health care utilization are reviewed in an effort to gain a better insight on improving the help-seeking skills for foster youth. These skills can then become “life-long skills” that the adolescents can draw upon for their enhanced independence and self-sufficiency, especially as they leave foster care and enter adulthood. However, the review of the literature leads the authors to the conclusion that youth in foster care may not be viewed as help-seekers but rather as “help-receivers.”

Skills Building and Social Support Enhancement to Reduce HIV Risk among Women in Jail

Despite the scope of the HIV/AIDS epidemic among female offenders, little is known about the risk behaviors of these women and even less about ways in which to reduce HIV/AIDS among this population. This article describes the development of an eight-session group cognitive-behavioral and social support enhancement intervention that aims to reduce HIV risk among drug-using female offenders. The intervention is based on social-cognitive theory and informed by other skills-training approaches with demonstrated efficacy at reducing HIV risk. Both current and former offenders were involved in the development of this intervention. Help-seeking and social support skills are unique to this intervention, as is an eight-session booster conducted after release from jail to enhance transfer of skills to the community.