Browsing by Subject "Help-seeking"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Barriers to Rural Mental Health Care: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Mental Health Outcomes, Services, and Help-Seeking
    (2019-05) Jensen, Emily
    Existing rural mental research points to several concerns regarding symptoms and outcomes (e.g., mental health status, mental health symptoms, suicide rates). Research also identifies several barriers that inhibit rural residents from accessing quality mental health services (e.g., factors influencing the availability of services, accessibility of services, and acceptability of services). Investigations that compare rural mental health outcomes and help-seeking to urban counterparts are limited; what does exist points to mixed findings about differences between groups. The research presented here aims to elucidate the limited understanding of barriers to mental health care in rural communities via a two-study, mixed-methods investigation. Study 1 is an analysis of an existing dataset collected in eight counties in Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin in 2015. The survey includes questions about behaviors, outcomes, and social determinants of health and mental health and includes (N = 6,976) responses. Chi-square and logistic regression analyses were used to assess the impact of geographic location (measured by RUCA codes) on mental health symptoms, help-seeking behaviors, and specific barriers to seeking help. Demographic covariates – including age, education level, gender, and income – were also considered. Results reveal some variation between the chi-square and logistic regression analyses, and hypotheses for the disparities are discussed. Findings from the logistic regression analyses revealed no significant differences across rural and urban groups for indication of mental health symptoms, though age and gender did account for some variance. The rural group was more likely to indicate delayed or forgone help-seeking behaviors, and the urban group was more likely to indicate attitudinal barriers to seeking mental health care. Study 2 is a qualitative study that followed a Hermeneutic phenomenological design. The goal of this study was to increase understanding of barriers to rural mental health care via rich descriptions of lived experiences with those barriers. Thirteen (N = 13) family physicians who practice in the same geographic area as the dataset in Study 1 were recruited using convenience and snowball sampling techniques. Family physicians were chosen for these key informant interviews because existing research suggests that primary care often serves as the front line of mental health care in rural communities. Their ability to speak to their own experiences, and to the experiences of their patients, also facilitated the gathering of a range of perspectives and rich descriptions. Findings were organized into seven overarching themes; key ideas therein pointed to both the presence of structural and attitudinal barriers to mental health care, and to ideas physicians have for overcoming them. Implications from the two studies point to the need for continued investigation into the presence of barriers to mental health care for rural communities, and ideas for maximizing existing resources. Differences between structural and attitudinal barriers are discussed alongside findings from these two studies, and future research should continue to investigate the differences between these categories of barriers. Increased understanding of what prevents rural communities from accessing needed mental health care will increase the efficiency and efficacy of future interventions aimed at reducing barriers and increasing access to care.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Battered women’s help-seeking: a turning point from victimization to readiness.
    (2009-05) Park, Eonju
    This exploratory qualitative study investigates battered women's help-seeking on the continuum of their victimization and readiness. This study starts with a conceptualization of battered women's help-seeking strategies and identifies positive and negative help based on twelve women's perceptions of those services. Finally, this study suggests a conceptual model for battered women's help-seeking from formal social services. In-depth interviews with twelve survivors of domestic violence revealed that these battered women sought help from formal social services toward the end of their abusive relationships, and utilized diverse help-seeking strategies from various help sources including but not limited to seeking protection from the criminal justice system. They especially perceived formal social service agencies and personnel as positive if the personnel valued self-determination, validated that the abuse was not the women's fault, and provided resources to (re)build their self-sufficiency. In addition, formal social services were often able to protect them from the abuse. In this regard, positive help from formal social services influenced the women's readiness to change by affecting the construction of a turning point. Negative help from formal social services kept battered women in the status quo only before they approached their turning point. Not wanting to minimize the importance of the criminal justice system's response in fostering the batterer's accountability, this research found that it is also essential to focus on battered women's varied and self-identified needs and to increase their accessibility to these resources. This study suggests that formal social services help women end the abuse by respecting women's self-determination and promoting women's readiness to reach a turning point.