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Josephine Kuhl,1 Liat Jarkon-Horlick,2 and Richard F. Morrissey3 Received March 19, 1996; accepted March 12, 1997
Objective: To construct and validate an instrument that would measure barriers to help-seeking behavior in adolescents. Method: A 37-item questionnaire based on prior help-seeking literature was constructed to yield a total score indicating strength of barriers to help-seeking behavior. The instrument was given to a sample of 280 high school students following a pilot study of 65 students. Results: The instrument was found to have good test-retest and intemal reliability and adequate validity in the tested population. It shows promise in helping to identify adolescents who may be amenable to, and opposed to, therapeutic intervention, and may aid in understanding which barriers to help seeking are most significant in any given population.
INTRODUCTION
Interest in help-seeking behavior of both emotionally disturbed and nondisturbed adolescents has increased in recent years. It has been established that of an estimated 17 million adolescents, 20% show signs of emotional or behavioral disturbance (Offer et al., 1991; Whitaker et al., 1990). Of these, the majority do not receive help (Dubow et al., 1990; Offer et al., 1991) and those who do rarely receive help from mental health professionals (Seiffge-Krenke, 1989).
Because of the relative scarcity of studies addressing adolescent mental health help seeking, a review of the literature on general help seeking among adolescents was conducted. General help seeking includes seeking help from both professionals and nonprofessionals for a variety of issues, including academic, social, and medical problems. The literature on help seeking indicates that it is a complicated and poorly understood behavior that is influenced by demographic and psychosocial factors (Kellam et al., 1981), is not homogenous across populations (Garland and Zigler, 1994), and may not conform to previously held stereotypes of adolescent behavior (Benson, 1990). For the purposes of this study, help-seeking behavior is confined to mental health help seeking and defined as the formal seeking out of services from a mental health professional.
Previous studies have attempted to identify help-seeking behaviors and to specify characteristics of adolescents who may or may not seek help. Unfortunately, many of the findings are disparate and contradictory. Kellam et al. (1981) concluded that help-seeking behavior of adolescents was independent of age, socioeconomic status,...