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Help-seeking attitudes and intentions for generalised anxiety disorder in adolescents: the role of anxiety literacy and stigma

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Abstract

Help seeking for anxiety tends to be low in adolescents. Identifying modifiable factors that may facilitate help seeking is important. The aim of the current study is to test the effects of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) literacy and stigma (personal and perceived) on attitudes and intentions toward seeking help from professionals and key adult sources. 1767 adolescents aged 12–18 years participated in the current study and completed measures of GAD literacy, GAD stigma, professional help-seeking attitudes, and intentions to seek help from a range of sources. The results of the study found that participants had limited GAD literacy and up to 20% personally agreed with stigmatising statements about GAD. Participants reported greater intentions to seek help from parents than from formal sources. More positive attitudes toward seeking help were associated with higher levels of GAD literacy (p < 0.001) and lower personal GAD stigma (p < 0.001). Lower perceived GAD stigma was associated with increased intentions to seek help from their mothers (p < 0.05) or fathers (p < 0.01), while lower personal GAD stigma was also associated with help-seeking intentions from their mothers (p < 0.05). Higher perceived GAD stigma was associated with intentions to seek help from nobody (p < 0.001). Overall, the current study highlights the important role that parents can play in the help-seeking process for adolescents, with parents often the most accessible source of help. Improving parent and adolescent knowledge and attitudes towards GAD may help to improve early help seeking in young people.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation. ALC, PJB and MT are supported by National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Fellowships 1122544, 1158707 and 1138710 respectively. We would like to acknowledge and thank the staff and students who participated in the Y-Worri study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Mental Health Research, Research School of Population Health, The Australian National University, 63 Eggleston Road, Acton , ACT, 2601, Australia

    Alison L. Calear, Philip J. Batterham & Sonia McCallum

  2. Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales, Hospital Road, Randwick, NSW, 2031, Australia

    Michelle Torok

Authors
  1. Alison L. Calear
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  2. Philip J. Batterham
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  3. Michelle Torok
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  4. Sonia McCallum
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Correspondence to Alison L. Calear.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. The current study received ethical approval from the Australian National University Human Research Ethics Committee (protocol number 2010/550) and the relevant education departments responsible for the schools that participated in the trial.

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Calear, A.L., Batterham, P.J., Torok, M. et al. Help-seeking attitudes and intentions for generalised anxiety disorder in adolescents: the role of anxiety literacy and stigma. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 30, 243–251 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-020-01512-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-020-01512-9

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