Help-seeking by rural residents for mental health problems: The importance of agrarian values
- Authors: Judd, Fiona , Jackson, Henry , Komiti, Angela , Murray, Greg , Fraser, Caitlin , Grieve, Aaron , Gomez, Rapson
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry Vol. 40, no. 9 (2006), p. 769-776
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- Description: Objective: To examine the role of stoicism, self-efficacy and perceived stigma in predicting help-seeking by rural residents, for mental health problems. Method: A cross-sectional community survey was conducted with a sample of 467 rural residents (58% female), who completed self-report questionnaires assessing current levels of symptomatology, disability, perceived stigma, self-efficacy, stoicism, attitudes towards and experience of seeking help for psychological problems. Results: Overall, 7.6% (n = 129) of respondents had sought help from a general practitioner and/or mental health professional for psychological problems or a mental health issue. More women than men reported having sought such help. Lifetime help-seeking for a psychological problem or mental health issue was positively associated with higher levels of distress and lower levels of stoicism and, to a lesser extent, lower levels of self-efficacy. Conclusions: Efforts to improve help-seeking by rural residents for mental health problems should focus on understanding and addressing attitudes, such as stoicism which act as barriers to help-seeking. © 2006 The Authors; Journal compilation © 2006 The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003002045
Australian rural adolescents’ experiences of accessing psychological help for a mental health problem
- Authors: Boyd, Candice , Francis, Kristy , Aisbett, Damon , Newnham, Krystal , Sewell, Jessica , Dawes, Graham , Nurse, Sarah
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Rural Health Vol. 15, no. (2007), p. 196-200
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- Description: Objective: This study aims to explore Australian rural adolescents’ experiences of accessing help for a mental health problem in the context of their rural communities. Design and setting: A qualitative research design was used whereby university students who had sought help for a mental health problem during their adolescence were interviewed about their experiences. Interviews were conducted face-to-face at the university. Main outcome measures: A semi-structured interview schedule was designed around the study’s main research questions. Audio-taped interviews were transcribed and thematically coded using a constant comparative method. Participants: Participants were first-year undergraduate psychology students between the ages of 17 and 21 years who sought help for a mental health issue during their adolescence and who at that time resided in a rural area. Results: Participants highlighted various barriers to seeking help for mental health problems in the context of a rural community, including: social visibility, lack of anonymity, a culture of self-reliance, and social stigma of mental illness. Participants’ access to help was primarily school-based, and participants expressed a preference for supportive counselling over structured interventions. Characteristics of school-based helpers that made them approachable included: ‘caring’, ‘nonjudgemental’, ‘genuine’, ‘young’, and able to maintain confidentiality. Conclusions: The findings support previous research that reveals barriers to help seeking for mental health problems that are unique to the culture of rural communities. The study raises questions about the merit of delivery of primary mental health care to young people via GPs alone and suggests that school-based counsellors be considered as the first step in a young person’s access to mental health care.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005807
Help seeking : Agentic learners initiating feedback
- Authors: Fletcher, Anna
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Educational Review Vol. 70, no. 4 (2018), p. 389-408
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- Description: Effective feedback is an essential tool for making learning explicit and an essential feature of classroom practice that promotes learner autonomy. Yet, it remains a pressing challenge for teachers to scaffold the active involvement of students as critical, reflective and autonomous learners who use feedback constructively. This paper seeks to present a recalibrated perspective of feedback by exploring the concept as a student-initiated learning action, manifested within classroom practice as help seeking for learning. Teachers and students from years 2, 4 and 6 at an Australian primary school worked together on a writing project, which was structured as a three-phase learning process. The value of this approach was revealed by data gathered through students’ planning templates, writing samples, interviews with students and teachers along with email correspondence with the teachers. A framework of social cognitive theory guided the analysis. It is suggested that the three-phase Assessment as Learning (AaL) process has the potential to support teachers in scaffolding students to seek help at a time when they are receptive to feedback. Furthermore, this AaL approach appears to have enhanced the teachers’ practice, particularly in respect to providing support for students during the forethought stage of the learning process. Practical techniques for scaffolding students’ adaptive help seeking and autonomy as learners are presented in the paper.
Influences on women in rural and regional areas help-seeking behaviour during the perinatal period
- Authors: Moore, Kathleen , Carey, Timothy , Wall, Cindy
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Australian Rural and Remote Mental Health Symposium p. 39-52
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- Description: A substantial level of depression and anxiety is experienced by women in the perinatal period. This distress might be exacerbated for women in the Northern Territory who reside there temporarily as a function of family-work circumstances and hence may have a limited local social support network; while other women, most notably Indigenous women, who live remotely, might experience issues because of distance, culture, and language. There is limited research concerning depression and anxiety in the perinatal period among women living in these rural and remote areas or in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. It is generally considered however, that the incidence will be at least on a par with the general population. Many women no matter their cultural or social circumstances fail to seek help from primary care professionals for emotional distress during the perinatal period and indeed, such distress often is not detected even during routine health visits. These low detection and help-seeking rates can lower the quality of life and increase the morbidity rate among these women in later life, and potentially have an impact on their offspring and partners. Women in rural and remote regions who do seek help may face additional barriers in accessing and/or completing a sequence of treatment. In this paper, we propose a model of help-seeking which is specific to women in the perinatal period taking account of rural and remote factors. The model remains to be validated but the importance of determining factors which influence women’s decision to seek help for psychological issues during this time cannot be overemphasised.