Symptoms of Mental Health Problems: Children’s and Adolescents’ Understandings and Implications for Gender Differences in Help Seeking
Open accessAbstract
Amidst concerns that young people’s mental health is deteriorating, it is important to explore their understandings of symptoms of mental health problems and beliefs around help seeking. Drawing on focus group data from Scottish school pupils, we demonstrate how they understood symptoms of mental health problems and how their characterisations of these symptoms as ‘rare’ and ‘weird’ informed participants’ perceptions that peers, teachers and parents would respond to disclosure in stigmatising ways. Consequently, participants suggested that they would delay or avoid disclosing symptoms of mental health problems. We highlight subtle gender and age differences and outline implications for policy and practice.
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Seven studies did not find significant differences between genders in help-seeking barriers and facilitators.
“Seven studies did not find significant differences between genders [28, 39, 40, 42, 46, 51, 69].”
From What are the barriers, facilitators and interventions targeting help-seeking behaviours for common mental health problems in adolescents? A systematic review (2020) · cites this paper as [69]
The Discussion (page unavailable) says boys’ and girls’ understandings were largely consistent and that differences in their accounts of help seeking were subtle. It also describes a stronger concern among boys about their identity being questioned. Because this was a qualitative focus-group study, it does not establish that gender differences were statistically nonsignificant. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe majority of barrier/facilitator studies were cross sectional (n=36), thirteen were qualitative, and six used a mixed-method design.
“The majority of the studies were cross sectional (n = 36) [26–61], thirteen studies were qualitative [62–74] and six used a mixed-method design [75–80].”
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- Authors
- MacLean, A., Hunt, K., & Sweeting, H.
- Affiliations
- MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit (GB)
- Corresponding author
- MacLean, Alice
- Venue
- Children & Society
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2012-01-13
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 161-173
- ISSN
- 0951-0605 (ISSN-L)
- 1099-0860
- PMC
- PMC4540163
- OpenAlex
- W1559000135
- Cited by
- 45
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 1.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Children & Society (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ENLIGHTEN (Jurnal Bimbingan dan Konseling Islam) (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Medical Research Council
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychology and Mental Health
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Keywords
- psychiatric symptoms, help-seeking, gender differences, help-seeking helplessness, stigma, age differences, school pupils, youth mental health
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