Understanding Aotearoa New Zealand University Students Intentions to Seek Help If Experiencing Mental Distress: A Comparison of Naturalistic and Interventional Findings

University students globally are consistently identified as a vulnerable group for mental distress and suicide. Despite this, students report low engagement in help-seeking behaviours. This series of studies aimed to assess barriers to help-seeking for students and the impact of an intervention that sought to increase support-seeking intentions. In Study 1, 373 undergraduate psychology students completed items related to depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, stigma, and help-seeking intentions. In Study 2, 133 undergraduate psychology students were randomly allocated into one of three intervention groups (control, infographic, video) and completed measures as used in Study 1. Despite experiencing clinically relevant symptoms and recent suicidal ideation, students in Study 1 tended to report low intentionality to seek help, citing perceptions that their distress was not serious enough or a desire to handle their issues independently. In Study 2, an infographic about different support services increased student’s intentions to access support services and reduced their perception that their issues were not serious enough. Overall, Aotearoa New Zealand students endorsed similar barriers to help-seeking as students in other countries. Importantly, we demonstrated that a simple infographic intervention reduced perceptions regarding these common barriers and may increase students’ knowledge about when to seek help.