TY - JOUR PY - 2024// TI - Mental health help-seeking patterns among early adolescents across indicators of adversity JO - School mental health A1 - Dupont-Reyes, Melissa J. A1 - Datzman, Jared A1 - Villatoro, Alice P. A1 - Phelan, Jo C. A1 - Link, Bruce G. SP - 177 EP - 188 VL - 16 IS - 1 N2 - To help guide school mental health policy and practice, we evaluated patterns of mental health help-seeking across lifetime adversity among sixth-grade adolescents. An ethnically/socioeconomically diverse sample of sixth-graders (N = 751) self-completed assessments of help-seeking and indicators of lifetime adversities: violence victimization, poverty, parent loss/divorce, mental illness/substance abuse at home, and stressors related to social identity. Logistic regression models adjusting for family/personal factors examined adversity factors on help-seeking outcomes overall and across subgroups with mental health perceived problems and high-symptoms. Overall, odds increased between perceived problem and formal service use, poverty and formal service/school counselor use, and high-symptoms/victimization and talking to a friend (p < 0.05). Among those with perceived problems, odds increased between mental illness/substance abuse at home and formal service use, victimization and talking to a friend, and poverty and school counselor use (p < 0.05). Among those with no mental health problems, odds increased between victimization and formal service/school counselor use, and poverty and formal service use (p < 0.05). No significant patterns were observed in the high-symptom subgroup. Understanding how adversity shapes help-seeking can help guide school mental health policies and practices. Study findings point to areas for expansion of supports for students with adversity to create a mental health safety net and help mitigate future risk.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1866-2625 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12310-023-09628-4 ID - ref1 ER -