depressive disorder and seeking help

PURPOSE: Mental health challenges are highly prevalent in African migrants. However, understanding of mental health outcomes in first-generation voluntary African migrants is limited, despite the unique challenges faced by this migrant subgroup. This review aimed to synthesize the literature to understand the mental health challenges, help-seeking behavior, and the relationship between mental health and mental health help-seeking behavior in first-generation voluntary African migrants living outside Africa...

BACKGROUND: Help-seeking provides opportunities for early prevention and intervention of mental health problems. However, little is known about factors that impact help-seeking from a life-course and socioecological perspective. This study aimed to examine factors that impact adolescents' formal and informal help-seeking in three population groups: the whole population, adolescents with depressive symptoms and adolescents with anxiety symptoms. METHODS: We drew on data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children birth cohort...

Mental health issues are prevalent among young people. An estimated 10% of children and adolescents worldwide experience a mental disorder, yet most do not seek or receive care. Media mental health awareness campaigns, defined as marketing efforts to raise awareness of mental health issues through mass media, are an effort to address this concern. While previous research has evaluated the outcomes of specific media mental health awareness campaigns, there is limited data synthesizing their overall effects. This study addresses the knowledge gap by reviewing the existing literature on the impact of media mental health awareness campaigns on young people...

BACKGROUND: We conducted a clinic-based cross-sectional survey among 710 people living with HIV/AIDS in stable 'sexual' relationships in central and southwestern Uganda. Although sexual function is rarely discussed due to the private nature of sexual life. Yet, sexual problems may predispose to negative health and social outcomes including marital conflict. Among individuals living with HIV/AIDS, sexual function and dysfunction have hardly been studied especially in sub-Saharan Africa...

INTRODUCTION: In 2021, the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust allocated over £2 million to programmes designed to have a clear and demonstrable impact on suicide prevention. Four grant holders delivered a combination of psychotherapeutic interventions, group activities, social prescribing, peer support mentoring, life skills coaching, educational courses and practical help with housing and employment. The evaluation was completed between August 2021 and July 2023. METHODS: A survey was completed by 503 participants at entry and 423 at exit...

BACKGROUND: Emerging adulthood is often associated with mental health problems. About one in three university students report symptoms of depression and anxiety that can negatively affect their developmental trajectory concerning work, intimate relationships, and health. This can interfere with academic performance, as mood and anxiety disorders are key predictors of dropout from higher education. A treatment gap exists, where a considerable proportion of students do not seek help for mood and anxiety symptoms...

PROBLEM: Families living in poverty may be particularly vulnerable to the deleterious effects of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The current study focuses on caregivers of preschoolers aged 3-5 years old who lived in poverty to explore how COVID-19 affected mental health and lifestyle behaviors and what coping strategies were helpful for dealing with challenges induced by COVID-19. METHODS: A qualitative study was conducted using individual semi-structured interviews with 17 caregivers...

BACKGROUND: Seeking help for severe depressive symptoms remains a major obstacle for particular groups within the general population. Value-related attitudes might contribute to this treatment gap, particularly in rural regions with a low density of psychiatric-psychotherapeutic services. We aimed to investigate narratives of socialization, value systems, and barriers of help-seeking to better understand social milieus at increased risk for underuse of psychiatric-psychotherapeutic services in a rural area in East Germany...

Mental health conditions are highly prevalent among physicians with high rates of depression, anxiety, stress-related disorders, suicidal ideation and burnout reported among medical practitioners at all levels of training and practice. This phenomenon is in part contributed by a highly stressful clinical environment with an often suboptimal support system for doctors. Concerningly, there is hitherto a striking reluctance amongst medical trainees/practitioners to seek treatment/help for mental health-related conditions due to fear of associated stigma and negative career repercussions...

IMPORTANCE: Despite decades of neuroimaging studies reporting brain structural and functional alterations in depression, discrepancies in findings across studies and limited convergence across meta-analyses have raised questions about the consistency and robustness of the observed brain phenotypes. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the associations between 6 operational criteria of lifetime exposure to depression and functional and structural neuroimaging measures. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This cross-sectional study analyzed data from a UK Biobank cohort of individuals aged 45 to 80 years who were enrolled between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2018...

Psychiatric disorders are complex, multifactorial illnesses. It is challenging for us to understand the underlying mechanism of psychiatric disorders. In recent years, the morbidity of psychiatric disorders has increased yearly, causing huge economic losses to the society. Although some progress, such as psychotherapy drugs and electroconvulsive therapy, has been made in the treatment of psychiatric disorders, including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive and autism spectrum disorders, antidepressants and psychotropic drugs have the characteristics of negative effects and high rate of relapse...

BACKGROUND: Adolescent non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a major public health issue. Family factors are significantly associated with NSSI in adolescents, while studies on forecasting NSSI at the family level are still limited. In addition to regression methods, machine learning (ML) techniques have been recommended to improve the accuracy of family-level risk prediction for NSSI. METHODS: Using a dataset of 7967 students and their primary caregivers from a cross-sectional study, logistic regression model and random forest model were used to test the forecasting accuracy of NSSI predictions at the family level...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate variations in intended utilization in cases of an acute psychotic episode, an alcohol related or depressive disorder depending on different case characteristics. METHODS: A telephone survey with case vignettes was conducted (N=1,200). Vignettes varied in terms of urgency of symptoms, daytime, sex of the afflicted person and age/mental disorder. The respondents were asked to indicate whom they would contact first in the described case. RESULTS: Outpatient physicians were named most frequently as the first point of contact (61...

BACKGROUND: Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a growing healthcare problem. Individuals with NSSI have an increased risk of suicidality. Due to stigma, they may self-injure in secret, which means they might not seek help until events have escalated to include suicidal ideation or a mental disorder. Interventions delivered via mobile phone applications (apps) have been linked to reductions in self-injury. This protocol outlines a trial, which examines whether the Zero Self-Harm intervention, consisting of an app for people with NSSI, can reduce the number of NSSI episodes, suicide ideation, and depressive symptoms...

OBJECTIVES: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological state of the under-18 population includes an increased risk of psychopathological symptoms development and exacerbation of already present psychiatric disorders. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of mental health problems in Polish children and adolescents with a focus on suicidal and self-harm behavior with the impact of the pandemic. METHODS: The questionnaire collected demographic data, information regarding mental states and psychopathological symptoms, history of self-harm and suicidal behaviors, as well as the experience of psychological, and physical violence, and suicidal self-harm behaviors before and during the COVID-19 pandemic...

Less help-seeking for an eating disorder is predicted by higher levels of denial of, and failure to perceive, illness severity. This research evaluates a "backdoor" approach to early intervention by investigating whether internet cognitive behaviour therapy for perfectionism can significantly improve disordered eating. Additionally, we investigated whether a more interactive intervention impacted outcomes. Participants were recruited worldwide online; 368 were screened, 172 (46.7%) met inclusion criteria (endorsed high shape, weight, or eating concerns) and randomised to an interactive (Focused Minds Program; FMP) or static PDF intervention (Centre for Clinical Intervention; CCI-P) or waitlisted (control condition)...

BACKGROUND: Case-control studies in major depression have established numerous regional grey and white matter effects in fronto-limbic brain regions. Yet, brain structural studies of dimensional depressive psychopathology within the subclinical spectrum are still limited, in particular for multi-modal imaging approaches. METHODS: Using voxel-based and surface-based morphometry (cortical thickness) in combination with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in a large non-clinical sample (N = 300), we correlated grey and white matter structural variation with subclinical depressive symptoms assessed with Beck's Depression inventory (BDI)...

BACKGROUND: Research on mental illness labeling has demonstrated that self-labeling (identifying with a mental illness label, e.g., "I have depression") is associated with internalized stigma, maladaptive responses to that stigma, and lower quality of life. However, research has not yet examined the link between self-labeling and how individuals cope with emotional distress. It is important to understand this relationship because adaptive and maladaptive methods of coping can lead to positive and negative mental illness outcomes...

AIMS: Children and adolescents with a history of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are more likely than their peers to develop mental health difficulties, but not enough is known about their help-seeking behaviours and preferences. We aimed to determine whether ACEs are associated with access to and perceived unmet need for mental health services and support amongst secondary school students. METHODS: We used multi-level logistic regression with data from the 2020 OxWell Student Survey to assess whether ACEs were associated with (1) prior access to mental health support and (2) perceived unmet need for mental health services in a community sample of English secondary school students...

INTRODUCTION: This qualitative study aimed to understand the lived experiences of adolescents with depression seeking help in our healthcare system, with the focus on initial symptoms, experience of care and reflection after recovery. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 adolescents, aged between 13 and 19 years, who were diagnosed and treated for diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 5th edition major depressive disorder and clinically judged to have recovered at the time of recruitment...