Suicidality associated with decreased help-seeking attitudes in college students : Implications for identifying and treating at-risk students

Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V..

Suicide is a leading cause of death in college-aged youth, yet only half of all college students report engaging in professional mental health help-seeking. We examined how the various aspects of young adults' suicidality were associated with their openness to pursue professional mental health care in the future (i.e., "future help-seeking intentions"). Multilevel binary logistic regressions were tested in a sample of 24,446 U.S. college undergraduates with suicidality. The moderating effect of past service utilization on future help-seeking intentions was also tested. Strikingly, young people reporting past-year suicidal ideation, past-year suicidal attempts, and self-reported likelihood of a future suicide attempt demonstrated decreased likelihood of future help-seeking intentions, while those reporting prior diagnosis of a mental health condition and/or past service utilization demonstrated an increased likelihood. Past service utilization also significantly moderated the effect of suicide disclosure, such that youth reporting prior disclosure and prior professional treatment-seeking demonstrated greater odds of future help-seeking intentions relative to those who had disclosed suicidality but never utilized professional services. In order to mitigate the mental health crisis facing youth, further exploration is necessary to understand why students with suicidality do not report openness to seek help. It is also imperative to develop and implement novel strategies to identify at-risk students, understand and alleviate relevant barriers to treatment, and promote positive help-seeking attitudes and behaviors.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:335

Enthalten in:

Psychiatry research - 335(2024) vom: 20. Apr., Seite 115825

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Rastogi, Ritika [VerfasserIn]
Woolverton, G Alice [VerfasserIn]
Stevens, Courtney [VerfasserIn]
Chen, Justin A [VerfasserIn]
Liu, Cindy H [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Help-negation
Help-seeking intentions
Journal Article
Mental health help-seeking
Suicide
Young adults

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 15.04.2024

Date Revised 15.04.2024

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1016/j.psychres.2024.115825

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM369500806