The impact of attitudes as a mediator between sense of autonomy and help-seeking intentions for self-injury

BACKGROUND: Self-injury is a complex issue, further complicated by the fact that up to half of young people who self-injure do not receive help. Young people who do receive help for self-injury claim they prefer to access family and friends over more formal sources of help. This original research set out to examine the influence of negative attitudes to professional help and a sense of autonomy on help-seeking intentions. METHODS: A cross-section of 220 university students and young adults from the community (Students = 131, other participants = 89; mean age = 24.64) completed anonymous online questionnaires measuring self-injurious behaviour and mental health related problems, attitudes toward seeking professional mental health help, autonomy, and intentions to seek help for self-injury. Two separate mediation models were tested using a bootstrapping approach to investigate intentions to seek help – one on mental health problems, and one specifically on self-injury. RESULTS: More positive attitudes to help-seeking were significantly associated with greater intentions to seek help, while higher perceived autonomy was associated with lower intentions to seek help. Attitudes fully mediated the negative relationship between autonomy and willingness to seek help for self-injury. The model also maintained partial mediation for willingness to seek help for other mental health problems, beyond self-injury. Current self-injurers expressed significantly more negative attitudes toward help-seeking compared to past self-injurers and those with no history of self-injury. Similarly, current self-injurers reported being less likely to seek help from anyone compared to both other groups. CONCLUSIONS: This study appears to be the first to set out to compare self-injurers’ attitudes to help-seeking directly with those of non-self-injurers, and the first to show that attitudes mediate the relationship between autonomy and help-seeking. The findings provide evidence that will assist development of interventions targeting negative attitudes toward seeking professional help, in order to increase help-seeking among self-injurers who would otherwise not receive treatment.