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OBJECTIVE: Black adults experience depression that is more severe than that of their White counterparts, yet they are less likely to receive treatment from a mental health professional. This study aimed to examine the relationships between medical mistrust or trust and the willingness to seek mental health care. METHODS: The authors conducted an online cross-sectional survey of 1,043 Black adults in the United States. The primary variables of interest were medical mistrust (measured via the 12-item Group-Based Medical Mistrust Scale; GBMMS) and a single item, derived from the General Help-Seeking Questionnaire, that assessed willingness to seek mental health care. The authors hypothesized that mistrust would have a negative correlation with willingness to seek help from a mental health professional. To estimate the association between level of mistrust and willingness to seek care, gamma regression models were fitted with a log link, and the analyses were adjusted for age, ethnic identity or origin, education, insurance status, personal income, citizenship status, and length of time in the United States. RESULTS: At low levels of medical mistrust (GBMMS scores ≤3), an increase in mistrust was significantly associated with an increase in the probability of seeking mental health care (rate ratio RR=1.55, p3), an increase in mistrust was associated with a decrease in care seeking (RR=0.74, p<0.001). Similar patterns were observed for medical trust. CONCLUSIONS: At low levels of medical mistrust among Black adults, each unit increase in mistrust was counterintuitively associated with an increase in willingness to seek care from a mental health professional.
Pederson et al. (Fri,) studied this question.