Brief report
The influence of stigma on first aid actions taken by young people for mental health problems in a close friend or family member: Findings from an Australian national survey of youth

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Abstract

Background

Young people are an important source of first aid for mental health problems in people they are close to, but their first aid skills remain inadequate. Research into the factors that influence mental health first aid skills are required to reveal targets for improving these skills. This study examined the influence of stigma on first aid actions taken by young people to help someone close to them with a mental health problem.

Methods

Participants in a national telephone survey of Australian youth (aged 12–25 years) reported on their stigmatising attitudes based on one of three disorders in vignettes: depression, depression with alcohol misuse, and social phobia. At a two-year follow-up interview, they were asked if they knew a family member or close friend with a problem similar to the vignette character since the initial interview, and those who did reported on the actions taken to help the person.

Results

Of the 1520 participants interviewed at follow up, 507 reported knowing someone with a similar problem. Young people's stigmatising attitudes (weak-not-sick, social distance and dangerousness/unpredictability) influenced their first aid actions.

Limitations

Social desirability could have affected the assessment of stigma, we could not assess the severity of the first aid recipient's problem or the benefit derived from the first aid provided, and the proportion of variance explained was modest.

Conclusions

Reducing stigma may help to improve the first aid that people with mental health problems can receive from young people who are close to them.

Introduction

Mental health first aid has been defined as ‘the help provided to a person developing a mental health problem or in a mental health crisis. The first aid is given until appropriate professional treatment is received or until the crisis resolves’ (Jorm et al., 2007, Jorm et al., 2008a, Langlands et al., 2008). We recently reported that young people are an important source of first aid for mental health problems in people they are close to, especially their peers (Yap et al., 2011). However, the quality of their first aid actions remains inadequate, especially amongst adolescents and young males, and towards people with social phobia. Research into the factors that influence mental health first aid actions is required to reveal targets for interventions to improve young people's first aid actions.

Of interest, findings from a large national survey of Australian adults indicate that stigma may be a potential barrier to the provision of first aid for a mental health problem. In particular, people with more stigmatizing attitudes towards a vignette character with a mental disorder were less likely to say that they would encourage professional help seeking or provide personal support if someone they knew had a similar problem (Jorm et al., 2005). However, given that this survey involved adults aged over 18 and assessed respondents' first aid intentions, less is known about the influence of stigma on young people's first aid actions. More recently, we reported that young people's stigma was associated with their help-seeking intentions and beliefs in the helpfulness of various sources of help (Yap et al., 2010). It remains to be explored whether stigma also predicts the first aid actions they took to help a close other with a similar problem.

The current study addressed the gap in the literature using data from a two-wave national survey of Australian youth aged 12–25 years at baseline. We assessed whether young people's stigmatizing attitudes towards the vignette character with a depressive or anxiety disorder at baseline predicted actual first aid actions they took to help someone close to them with a similar problem during the two-year interval between interviews.

Section snippets

Participants

In 2006, a national computer-assisted telephone survey was carried out via random digit dialing on a sample of 2778 young Australians aged 12–25 years (61.5% response rate) (see Jorm et al., 2008a for more details). At the completion of the interview, 2459 respondents consented to being recontacted for a similar interview. About two years later, 1520 (61.8%) of these respondents completed the follow-up interview.

Survey interview

The national survey was conducted to investigate mental health literacy in

Results

Of the 1520 young people interviewed at follow-up, 507 (33.6%) reported having a family member or close friend with a problem similar to that described in the vignette since January 2007. Table 1 presents descriptive information about this subgroup. A larger proportion of respondents were female and young adults, and a larger proportion of recipients were female and friends of the respondent. Depression (with or without alcohol abuse) was more common than social phobia.

As summarized in Table 2,

Discussion

This study found that young people's stigmatizing attitudes towards a vignette character influenced the type of first aid actions they took, over and above respondent and recipient characteristics previously found to influence their first aid actions (Yap et al., 2011). In particular, the social distance and weak-not-sick stigma dimensions predicted less helpful first aid actions, whereas perceptions of dangerousness/unpredictability prompted the helpful action of professional help seeking on

Role of funding source

Funding for this study was provided by a National Health and Medical Research Council Program Grant, beyondblue: the national depression initiative, and the Colonial Foundation. The funding sources had no further role in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Conflict of Interest

None declared.

Acknowledgements

Funding for this study was provided by a National Health and Medical Research Council Program Grant, beyondblue: the national depression initiative, and the Colonial Foundation.

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