The Relationships Between Stigma Toward Psychological Help Seeking, Self-Efficacy, Family Sense of Coherence and Social Support

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships university students' stigma levels toward psychological help seeking with self-efficacy, family sense of coherence, and social support.Design/Methodology/Approach: This study was carried out with 520 students in 2016-2017 academic year. The data used in this study was adopted from Demographic Information Form, Self-Stigma of Seeking Help Scale, Stigma Scale for Receiving Psychological Help, General Self-Efficacy Scale, Short Form of the Family Sense of Coherence Scale and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support.Findings: Predictive power of self-efficacy, family sense of coherence, and perceived social support on self-stigma and public stigma were analyzed by hierarchical regression analysis. As a result of hierarchical regression analysis where the self-stigma and public stigma toward psychological help seeking was taken as predicted variable, it was found that self-efficacy and family sense of coherence were the significant predictors of self-stigma and public stigma toward psychological help seeking. On the other hand, it was found that sub-dimensions of social support were no significant predictors of self-stigma and public stigma toward psychological help seeking.Highlights: When students have high self-efficacy, they may experience less self-stigma and public stigma. Support and psycho- educational groups can be arranged for students with low self-efficacy. Besides, family sense of coherence predicted university students' self-stigma and public stigma toward psychological help seeking levels. For individuals with a low family sense of coherence, psychological counselors can provide individual or group counseling.