The personal service gap: Factors affecting adolescents' willingness to seek help

Amiram Raviv*, Alona Raviv*, Idit Vago-Gefen, Abby Schachter Fink

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

76 Scopus citations

Abstract

The study explores adolescents' attitudes toward seeking help for emotional problems. The personal service gap is examined by asking adolescents about their willingness to refer themselves and others to formal (psychologists) and informal (friends) help sources, using a within-subjects design. The study included 662 Israeli adolescents in the 10th and 12th grades. The results indicate that adolescents refer peers more than themselves to a psychologist and to a friend. They are also more willing to refer themselves and peers to a friend rather than to a psychologist. Barriers to seeking psychological help are explored and significant correlations between perceptions of psychological benefit, problem severity and barriers to help seeking are described. Recommendations for increasing adolescents' awareness and use of help sources are suggested.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)483-499
Number of pages17
JournalJournal of Adolescence
Volume32
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2009

Keywords

  • Adolescent help-seeking behavior
  • Adolescents' attitudes toward seeking help
  • Barriers to help-seeking among adolescents
  • Gender differences in adolescent help-seeking behavior
  • Informal and formal help sources
  • Self-coping

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