Counseling Psychology

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Browsing Counseling Psychology by Author "El Zein, Christine"

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    Casual Beliefs of Mental Illness and Psychiatric Skepticism as Predictors of Help Seeking Behavior and Mental Health Literacy in Lebanon
    (2020) El Zein, Christine
    Previous research has shown that there is a high prevalence of mental disorders and low treatment seeking behavior prevailing globally and more noticeably in the Arab region including Lebanon, and Causal beliefs of mental illness were reported to influence help-seeking behavior. Also, research has shown that psychiatric skepticism is existing in Lebanon and it is associated with lower levels of mental health literacy and more negative attitudes towards professional help seeking behavior and a considerable number of patients suffering from a mental illness choose to seek treatment from the general health sector (i.e. physicians and general practitioners) instead of seeking help from the mental health sector. As such, the purpose of this study is to examine the psychosocial, biological and supernatural including religious causal beliefs of mental illness and their effect on the attitudes held towards professional help seeking behavior, to investigate the relationship between psychiatric skepticism and level of mental health literacy as well as attitudes held towards help seeking behavior among the Lebanese participants and to examine the level of health literacy prevalent among the Lebanese participants and compare it to their level of mental health literacy. This is a quantitative survey study design. Six hypothesis were tested using a sample of 206 participants with the majority of participants’ age ranging between 20 and 30 years old; participants were recruited through convenience and snowball sampling. Data was collected through the administration of five questionnaires, The Mental Health Literacy Scale (MHLS)(2015), Attitudes Toward Seeking Psychological Help – Short Form (ATSPPH-SF) (1995), Mental Distress Explanatory Model Questionnaire (MDEMQ) (1990), Psychiatric Skepticism Scale (PSS) (2011) and All Aspects of Health Literacy Scale (AAHLS)(2013). The results yielded no significant correlation between each of the causal beliefs of mental illness (biological, psychosocial and spiritual/religious causal beliefs) and attitudes towards psychological help. Also, no significant correlation was obtained between psychiatric skepticism and each of mental health literacy and attitudes towards psychological help. A statistically significant difference was obtained between mental health literacy and biological health literacy in the sample. Findings, limitations and implications were discussed at the end of the study.