E-Mental Health Awareness and Mental Health Help-Seeking Behavior in Persons with Disabilities: The Mediating Role of Unfavorable Treatment Perception

Background: Persons with disabilities face significant discrepancies in accessing healthcare services and are less likely to seek professional help due to various barriers, including unfavorable treatment perception. However, e-mental health awareness has emerged as a potential facilitator of help seeking behavior, yet the mechanism through which e-mental health services influences help seeking behavior remains poorly understood. Objective: Guided by the health belief model, the present study aimed to examine unfavorable treatment perception as a mediator between e-mental health awareness and help seeking behavior among persons with disabilities. Methods: The present study has employed a cross-sectional research design with 300 persons with disabilities recruited through both offline and online mode from registered institutes and NGOs working for persons with disabilities. Results: The findings of the study revealed that e-mental health awareness was positively related to help seeking behavior (r = .177, p = .002) and negatively related to unfavorable treatment perception (r = -.260, p = <.001). On the hand un-favorable treatment perception was negatively related to help seeking behavior (r = -.488, p < .001). Furthermore, mediation analysis revealed a significant indirect effect of e-mental health awareness on help seeking behavior through unfavorable treatment perception (β = 0.052, p = .011), indicating a case of partial mediation. The direct effect also remained significant (β = 0.077, p = .035) and the total effect was also significant (β = 0.129, p = .002). Conclusions: From the findings of the study, it was concluded that e-mental health awareness promoted help seeking behavior both directly and indirectly by reducing unfavorable treatment perceptions. These findings further suggest that interventions programs using e-mental health services to address stigma and negative treatment perceptions may be effective in improving help seeking behavior or service utilization among persons with disabilities.