Citation

Sears HA. J. Youth Adolesc. 2020; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick, P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, New Brunswick, E3B 5A3, Canada. hsears@unb.ca.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10964-020-01241-x

PMID

32335841

Abstract

When adolescents encounter problems, many prefer to seek help from a friend or a parent and some are reluctant to seek help from anyone. Yet information is sparse about how youth who choose each of these options differ from one another, including the proportions who select each help option consistently across personal and interpersonal problems or the extent to which they endorse characteristics related to help seeking. To address this gap, the proportions of adolescents who selected a friend, a parent, or no one as their first choice for help with one personal problem (feeling depressed) and three interpersonal problems (problems with a parent, a good friend, and a boyfriend/girlfriend) and the proportions who selected each help option consistently across these problems were examined. Youth in the three groups for each problem were also compared on characteristics linked to help seeking (gender, self-concealment, self-disclosure, perceived support, and school community). Participants were 488 Canadian adolescents (56% girls; Grades 9-12) who completed a survey at school. A majority of youth chose a friend for help with each problem and a substantial minority chose one help option consistently across problems. For each problem, adolescents in the Friend group and those in the Parent group differed on composites of specific characteristics, and adolescents in the No One group differed from those in the other groups on multiple characteristics. The results highlight the complexity associated with adolescents choosing a help option and draw attention to specific groups of youth who merit further examination.

Language: en

Keywords

Help avoidance; Help seeking; Interpersonal problems; Perceived support; Personal problems; Self-disclosure