Awareness on Mental Health Problems and Help Seeking Behavior among College Students

Mental health has become a thoroughly studied concept in developed countries. Accordingly, a significant amount of research has focused on the intentions of college students and adolescents to seek help for mental health problems. This study aims at assessing help-seeking behavior for common mental disorders among students from Narayana group of institutions. Multi stage sampling technique was employed. Help sources were assessed using the Actual Help Seeking Questionnaire and mental health status was assessed using the 10-item Kessler psychological distress scale. A total of 760 students were involved in the study. Instruments were self-administered; Multi regression analysis was used. From the respondents, 58.4% students were found to have current mental health problems and 7.9% of the students reported ideas of harming themselves. 78.4% students had sought help for their problems. 83.8% sought help from one or more of the informal help sources. Parents, friends and religious leaders were the source of help. This may be due to lack of information about availability of mental health services.