The majority of people with mental illness do not seek help at all or only with significant delay. To reduce help-seeking barriers for people with mental illness, it is therefore important to understand factors predicting help-seeking. Thus, we prospectively examined potential predictors of help-seeking behaviour among people with mental health problems (N = 307) over 3 years. Of the participants of a 3-year follow-up of a larger community study (response rate: 66.4%), data of 307 (56.6%) persons with any mental health problems (age-at-baseline: 16–40 years) entered a structural equation model of the influence of help-seeking, stigma, help-seeking attitudes, functional impairments, age and sex at baseline on subsequent help-seeking for mental health problems. Functional impairment at baseline was the strongest predictor of follow-up help-seeking in the model. Help-seeking at baseline was the second-strongest predictor of subsequent help-seeking, which was less likely when help-seeking for mental health problems was assumed to be embarrassing. Personal and perceived stigma, and help-seeking intentions had no direct effect on help-seeking. With only 22.5% of persons with mental health problems seeking any help for these, there was a clear treatment gap. Functional deficits were the strongest mediator of help-seeking, indicating that help is only sought when mental health problems have become more severe. Earlier help-seeking seemed to be mostly impeded by anticipated stigma towards help-seeking for mental health problems. Thus, factors or beliefs conveying such anticipated stigma should be studied longitudinally in more detail to be able to establish low-threshold services in future.

中文翻译：

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心理健康问题患者求助行为的预测因素：一项为期 3 年的前瞻性社区研究

大多数患有精神疾病的人根本不寻求帮助，或者只是很晚才寻求帮助。为了减少精神疾病患者寻求帮助的障碍，因此了解预测寻求帮助的因素非常重要。因此，我们前瞻性地研究了 3 年内有心理健康问题的人（N = 307）寻求帮助行为的潜在预测因素。在一项更大的社区研究（响应率：66.4%）的 3 年随访参与者中，输入了 307（56.6%）名有任何心理健康问题（基线年龄：16-40 岁）的人的数据寻求帮助、污名、寻求帮助态度、功能障碍、基线年龄和性别对后续心理健康问题寻求帮助的影响的结构方程模型。基线时的功能障碍是模型中后续寻求帮助的最强预测因子。在基线时寻求帮助是随后寻求帮助的第二强预测因素，当人们认为寻求心理健康问题的帮助令人尴尬时，这种可能性较小。个人和感知到的耻辱感以及寻求帮助的意图对寻求帮助没有直接影响。只有 22.5% 的有心理健康问题的人寻求任何帮助，存在明显的治疗差距。功能缺陷是寻求帮助的最强中介，这表明只有在心理健康问题变得更加严重时才寻求帮助。早期的寻求帮助似乎主要受制于对心理健康问题寻求帮助的预期耻辱。因此，