Awan Mahd, Boyce Melissa A, Lindsay Brittany L
Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
Front Psychol. 2025 Aug 14;16:1589093. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1589093. eCollection 2025.
When faced with mental health concerns, help-seeking can be a useful means to seek and receive help from formal support sources-such as mental health professionals, as well as informal support sources-such as friends and family. Both the intention and tendency to engage in formal help-seeking are predicted by mental health literacy, self-stigma, and emotional intelligence; however, the role that each of these factors play in relation to informal help-seeking is less clear. The current study examined the predictive value of mental health literacy with respect to both formal and informal help-seeking intentions. Additionally, the current study explored the role of self-stigma and emotional intelligence as possible mediators of these relationships. Undergraduate students ( = 301) were recruited from a Western Canadian university and completed a series of online questionnaires measuring their formal and informal help-seeking intentions, mental health literacy, self-stigma faced when seeking help, and meta-mood, as an operationalization of emotional intelligence. Results indicated that mental health literacy was a significant positive predictor of formal help-seeking intentions, and that both self-stigma and meta-mood partially mediated this relationship. Furthermore, results showed that mental health literacy did not serve as a significant predictor of informal help-seeking, although mental health literacy did have a significant indirect effect on informal help-seeking, through the mediation of meta-mood. The importance of self-stigma and meta-mood in relation to mental health literacy are highlighted in terms of formal help-seeking outcomes, and the implications of these findings for informal help-seeking are discussed.
当面临心理健康问题时，寻求帮助是从正式支持来源（如心理健康专业人员）以及非正式支持来源（如朋友和家人）寻求和获得帮助的有用途径。心理健康素养、自我污名和情商可以预测寻求正式帮助的意愿和倾向；然而，这些因素在非正式求助方面所起的作用尚不清楚。本研究考察了心理健康素养对正式和非正式求助意愿的预测价值。此外，本研究还探讨了自我污名和情商作为这些关系可能中介的作用。从加拿大西部一所大学招募了301名本科生，他们完成了一系列在线问卷，测量他们的正式和非正式求助意愿、心理健康素养、寻求帮助时面临的自我污名以及作为情商操作化指标的元情绪。结果表明，心理健康素养是正式求助意愿的显著正向预测因子，自我污名和元情绪都部分中介了这种关系。此外，结果显示，心理健康素养并不是非正式求助的显著预测因子，尽管心理健康素养通过元情绪的中介对非正式求助有显著的间接影响。从正式求助结果的角度强调了自我污名和元情绪与心理健康素养的关系，并讨论了这些发现对非正式求助的影响。
