BACKGROUND Many young migrants and their parents are reluctant to seek help for mental health and substance use problems. Help-seeking delays can result in longer duration of untreated problems and poorer outcomes. In this study, we aimed to identify the help-seeking barriers and facilitators for anxiety, depression and alcohol and drug use problems in young people from recently established sub...

BACKGROUND The impact of mental health problems and disorders in Australia is significant. Mental health problems often start early and disproportionately affect young people. Poor adolescent mental health can predict educational achievement at school and educational and occupational attainment in adulthood. Many young people attend higher education and have been found to experience a range of ...

BACKGROUND Stigma and discrimination are still prominent features of the life situation of persons with mental illness, adding to the burden of the illness, causing a lowered self-esteem, quality of life and affecting possibilities of adequate housing and work. It is also a major barrier to help seeking. The deinstitutionalization of mental health services has led to a significant increase in c...

OBJECTIVES To investigate whether intergroup contact in addition to education is more effective than education alone in reducing stigma of mental illness in adolescents. DESIGN A pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial compared education alone with education plus contact. Blocking was used to randomly stratify classes within schools to condition. Random allocation was concealed, generat...

PURPOSE We aimed to investigate mental health help-seeking intentions and preferences of rural Chinese adults and determine predictors of the intentions. METHODS A total of 2052 representative rural residents aged 18-60 completed a cross-sectional survey by face-to-face interviews. The survey included seven questions asking about respondents' help-seeking intentions and preferences, and a ser...

Context: This study set out to investigate the mental health literacy (MHL) about eight anxiety disorders (ADs), using vignette methodology. Methods: In all 317 British Adult participants completed a questionnaire with vignettes describing eight anxiety disorders including OCD, PTSD, Agoraphobia, Specific Phobias, Social Phobia, Separation Anxiety Disorder, GAD and Panic Disorder. Recognition, ...

BACKGROUND The community's knowledge and beliefs about mental health problems, their risk factors, treatments and sources of help may vary as a function of age. METHODS Data were taken from an epidemiological survey conducted during 2003-2004 with a national clustered sample of Australian adults aged 18 years and over. Following the presentation of a vignette describing depression (n = 1001) ...

This paper discusses factors associated with low rates of help-seeking and poorer quality of physical healthcare among people with mental illnesses. Evidence is reviewed on the associations between low rates of mental health literacy, negative attitudes towards people with mental illness, and reluctance to seek help by people who consider that they may have a mental disorder. People with mental...

BACKGROUND A depression-awareness campaign delivered through the Internet has been recommended as a public health approach that would enhance mental health literacy and encourage help-seeking attitudes. However, the outcomes of such a campaign remain understudied. OBJECTIVE The main aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an online depression awareness campaign, which was infor...