The Recognition of Mental Illness, Schizophrenia Identification, and Help-Seeking from Friends in Late Adolescence

Objective

The recognition of mental illness without anticipating stigma might encourage adolescents’ help-seeking behavior. We aimed to identify the relationship between mental illness identification and adolescents’ intention to seek help if faced with mental illness.

Method

We examined the relationships between help-seeking intentions and recognition of mental illness (RMI) without correctly identifying the disease name, as well as correct labelling of schizophrenia (LSC) using a vignette about a person with schizophrenia in a cross-sectional survey of 9,484 Japanese high-school students aged 15–18 years.

Results

When compared with adolescents who were unable to recognize the mental illness (UMI) in the vignette, those in the RMI group reported they were significantly more likely to seek help from friends (odds ratio [OR] = 1.29; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.17–1.41; P < 0.001) and expressed an increased likelihood to seek help from professionals (all P < .05). Those in the LSC group reported they were significantly less likely to exhibit help-seeking behavior (OR = 0.77, 95% CI = 0.65–0.92, P = 0.003) and expressed an increased likelihood of help-seeking from health professionals than the UMI group (all P < .05).

Conclusion

The ability to recognize mental illness without identifying the disease may increase help-seeking from friends, while the ability to identify the disease as schizophrenia might decrease late adolescents’ help-seeking. To promote help-seeking behavior among adolescents, improving their ability to recognize mental illness generally is recommended.

Below:  Percentages of subjects in each group seeking help from different sources according to their responses to the case vignette of schizophrenia

Full article at:   http://goo.gl/Auastz

By:  

Syudo Yamasaki, Shuntaro Ando, Kaori Endo, Nozomu Asukai, Atsushi Nishida
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, Tokyo, Japan

Shuntaro Ando, Kaori Endo
Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Shinji Shimodera
Department of Neuropsychiatry, Kochi Medical School, Kochi University, Kochi, Japan

Yuji Okazaki
Kouseikai Michinoo Hospital, Nagasaki, Japan

Yuji Okazaki
Tokyo Metropolitan Matsuzawa Hospital, Tokyo, Japan

Nozomu Asukai
Aoyamakai Aoki Hospital, Tokyo, Japan

Satoshi Usami
Department of Psychology, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

Tsukasa Sasaki
Department of Physical and Health Education, Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan