Mental health disorders are common among young people. They’re more prevalent among 16-24-year-olds than any other age group. In one survey, 38.8% had experienced a mental health disorder in the past year.
Yet, despite the mental health epidemic among adolescents and young adults, only a minority access treatment. Barriers to treatment are often institutional: in many places, specialist services do not exist, or spaces are lacking with long waiting lists. But many young people don’t seek help for mental health problems in the first place. Studies suggest that only 18-34% of young people with mental health disorders try to access professional support.
This blog explores the reasons why young people so often don’t seek help for mental health issues – and what factors facilitate help-seeking.
What Are the Barriers to Help-Seeking Among Young People?
It’s not only young people who are often reluctant to seek mental health support. Help-seeking is also low among adults in the general population, reaching only 35%. But there are also barriers to help-seeking that are specific to young people, youth services, and cultures around mental health.
Researchers have collected some of the most commonly cited reasons that young people don’t seek mental health in various scientific studies. We’ve outlined some of them below.
Stigmatising Attitudes Towards Mental Health Disorders
Studies suggest that stigma and embarrassment related to mental health are the most prominent barriers to help-seeking among young people. They may be afraid of stigma and judgement from friends or family members about their experiences. Young people may also internalise stigma and hold critical attitudes towards themselves. This can cause a reluctance to accept they have mental health issues or attempts to avoid confronting them.
Stigma is created and maintained on all levels of society, from public institutions (including the health care system) to media to interactions between friends. While awareness about mental health is growing, many people still hold misconceptions about mental health disorders. For example, people with mental illness are sometimes stereotyped to be dangerous and unpredictable or with little chance of recovery.
Evidence has established that neither of these misconceptions is true. In a study measuring help-seeking behaviours among adolescents, most were concerned about what other people would think about them if they sought support. This included the perceptions of the person giving support, such as a doctor or counsellor.
Trust in the Help-Giver
Many young people also describe their concerns about the confidentiality of seeking support. They may be afraid that doctors or other mental health professionals will contact their parents, teachers, or other figures and share information about their mental health.
These concerns may also be related to mental health stigma: they may worry about how others would react or perceive them if they were informed.
Research has found that young people are more willing to access mental health support when they trust the source of help. Consequently, building trust in professional services and agreements of confidentiality is an important step in improving young people’s access to treatment.
Identifying Mental Health Symptoms
Sometimes, young people may not recognise or accept their need for support because they can’t clearly identify mental health symptoms. Even with severe disorders, young people may understand their symptoms as normal behaviours, thoughts, and feelings. This may be exacerbated during adolescence when mood swings, intense emotions, and impulsive behaviours are too often considered a part of healthy teenage development.
As young people’s symptoms increase or change, they may adapt their idea of normality – and their interpretation of their symptoms – to avoid seeking help.
With a clearer shared understanding of mental health symptoms, there would be less room for young people to interpret and undermine their own experiences. This may help young people to recognise when they have mental health problems and accept the need for professional support.
Social Norms and Self-Reliance
Adolescents and young adults often prefer to rely on themselves rather than reach out to others during difficult times. This tendency may be related to social norms valuing independence and self-reliance over collective support and mutual aid.
When it comes to mental health, preferences for self-reliance can discourage young people from seeking external support when they need it. They may instead follow self-help strategies (that may be found online) or try to find their own solutions. Unfortunately, this often causes them to miss out on the treatment they need to recover.
Who Is Providing the Treatment?
Young people are sometimes reluctant to seek help because of concerns about the individuals (such as counsellors or doctors) providing treatment. This might include social characteristics of professionals such as race or class: without common social characteristics, young people may feel unable to relate to a professional or find that their problems are misunderstood.
Young people may also struggle with individual characteristics of a professional, including their personality and attitudes. Some young people have described certain professionals as out of touch with adolescent life, judgemental, and busy or unavailable. When mental health professionals work within a school, young people sometimes have issues with their ‘dual roles’ or a lack of confidentiality.
Knowledge About Mental Health Services
One key barrier to mental health help-seeking is a lack of knowledge about mental health services. When young people don’t have clear or easily accessible information about where to seek help, they may feel confused or unsure where to turn. This can add an extra level of stress or an additional ‘step’ in the process of seeking help that may discourage them from pursuing professional support.
Stress and Anxiety Related to Help-Seeking
Some young people may experience stress and anxiety about seeking help. This can be related to the process of help-seeking or the reality of treatment. Some evidence suggests that young people who have established relationships with mental health professionals are more likely to seek help again in the future.
What Factors Encourage Young People to Seek Mental Health Support?
Reaching out for support is hugely important for young people’s mental health. Adolescents and young adults with mental health disorders usually require additional support to recover and find a better quality of life. Without support, mental health disorders can sometimes get worse, increasing the risk of self-destructive behaviours or suicide.
A 2001 study asked adolescents about different ways to encourage and facilitate help-seeking for mental health concerns, including suicidal thoughts.
Building Trust
Young people spoke about the importance of trusting the person from whom they sought help. When they experienced difficulties, they tended to speak with close friends or community figures who they knew they could rely on.
Young people also suggested that their relationship with a professional was a very important factor in their decision to seek help. Once a positive relationship was established, they found it easier to open up about sensitive issues. They said that help-givers should be confidential, genuine, friendly, and emotionally safe.
Positive Past Experiences
Adolescents who had positive past experiences with psychological support were more likely to seek help again. These experiences may have been initiated by a close figure, such as a parent or grandparent.
Awareness and Knowledge About Mental Health
Many young people described awareness and knowledge of mental health services as an important facilitator of seeking help. This knowledge may have been gained through past experiences or conversations with friends in their social network. By interacting with others, young people could learn about potential sources of help that would fit their needs.
Education Campaigns
In the study, young people agreed that education campaigns that promote various forms of help-seeking could make it easier to reach out for support.
They identified several important ideas that educational programs should share. These included:
- Communicating that problems are a normal part of life for everyone
- Emphasising that no issue is unimportant if it causes distress
- Communicating that seeking help is a good start to solving a problem
- Describing different types of problems and the appropriate sources of help, including the roles and expertise of different types of professionals
- Describing how to access various sources of support, including the location of services
- Outlining the ethical responsibilities of mental health professionals
Validation of Mental Health Concerns
Young people spoke about the importance of understanding that mental health problems are normal and having their experiences validated. They often wanted reassurance that no problem was too small to speak about; without this, they struggled to identify when an issue was ‘big’ enough to seek help.
These ideas could be communicated through educational campaigns and directly by healthcare providers.
The Wave Clinic: Specialist Recovery Programs for Young People
The Wave Clinic offers transformative recovery programs for children, teenagers, and young adults. Our programs are delivered and led by a team of experts worldwide, with extensive experience in child and adolescent psychiatry. We understand the specific needs of young people, cultivating a treatment environment where they feel safe, welcome, and comfortable.
Our programs are built upon values of confidentiality, inclusivity, and fairness. We believe that every young person should have access to exceptional mental health support, regardless of their personal story. We offer both residential and outpatient care to suit young people’s various needs.
The Wave isn’t an ordinary treatment centre. We set the global standard for young people’s mental health care, combining clinical care with education, enriching experiences, and community actions. If you’re interested in finding out more about our programs, get in touch today.
