Stigma, help-seeking, and counseling with African American male college students

The help-seeking processes of college students can be impacted by aspects of public stigma, self-stigma, and mental health literacy. The unique influences of these factors, however, have yet to be explored with African American male college students (AAMCS). Using a sample of 116 AAMCS, the researchers examined changes of variances in AAMCS’ help-seeking intentions explained by public stigma, self-stigma, mental health literacy, and self-construal. Our hierarchical regression analyses revealed public stigma and self-stigma to account for 13.7% (ΔR² = 0.137) of variance in predicting help-seeking intentions of AAMCS. Mental health literacy and self-construal were not found to be statistically significant in their respective models. The overall hierarchical model accounted for 25.9% of variance in help-seeking intentions of AAMCS. Implications for counseling practice and future research in help-seeking are discussed.