Understanding Help-Seeking Behavior in Depression: A Qualitative Synthesis of Patients’ Experiences
Abstract
Despite decades of evidence-based interventions, depression remains a great challenge for public health due to enormous treatment gap and lag which, at least partially, result from low professional help-seeking by people suffering from depressive symptoms. In this article, we aim to gain a better understanding of help-seeking behavior in depression, and how to intervene effectively decreasing treatment gap and delay by using a meta-ethnography approach—an interpretive technique to systematically synthesize qualitative data. It integrates views and experiences of 474 individuals with depression across 20 papers. Findings suggest several interrelated major concepts—help-seeking as a threat to identity, social networks as a conflict or support, and alternative coping strategies as the main factor for treatment delay—as well as multiple relational, structural, attitudinal, cognitive, culture-specific, or gender-specific barriers. A model of help-seeking as a threat to identity is developed and discussed in the context of existing research.
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Men guided by gender stereotypes think women are too sensitive to pain.
“Men who are guided by gender stereotypes in their views, according to which health is not considered as a core issue in life, think women are too sensitive to pain [59].”
From The gendered experience with respect to health-seeking behaviour in an urban slum of Kolkata, India (2018) · cites this paper as [59]
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The gendered experience with respect to health-seeking behaviour in an urban slum of Kolkata, India
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- Authors
- Doblyte, S., & Jiménez-Mejías, E.
- Affiliations
- University of Granada, Granada, Spain
- Universidad de Granada (ES)
- Venue
- Qualitative Health Research
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2016-12-12
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 100-113
- ISSN
- 1049-7323 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-7557
- OpenAlex
- W2562993270
- Cited by
- 86
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 0.60
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Qualitative Health Research (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender Roles and Identity Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Suicide and Self-Harm Studies
- Keywords
- help-seeking, depression, treatment gap, treatment delay, social networks, coping strategies, help-seeking barriers, gender differences, cultural factors
- MeSH terms
- Help-Seeking Behavior, Adaptation, Psychological, Depression, Humans, Patient Acceptance of Health Care, Social Support, Personhood, Qualitative Research
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