Continuum Beliefs About Mental Illness: Examining Stigma, Help-Seeking Intentions, and Help-Providing Intentions Among Adolescent Males

Abstract

Continuum conceptualizations of mental illness are prevalent in adolescent mental health promotion despite a lack of research into how they relate to mental health stigma and help-seeking and help-providing intentions. Moreover, adolescent males are one of the least likely populations to seek help for a mental illness. The present study examined the relationship between continuum beliefs about mental illness in general, stigma, help-seeking intentions, and help-providing intentions, in a sample of 591 adolescent males aged between 12 and 18 years. Results revealed that stronger continuum beliefs predicted lower social distance toward people with mental illness. Continuum beliefs also weakly predicted greater intentions to seek help from formal and informal sources via an indirect path with social distance as a mediating variable. Similarly, the relationship between continuum beliefs and intentions to provide help was mediated by social distance. There was a direct relationship between higher continuum beliefs and lower intentions to not seek help. These findings suggest that promoting continuum beliefs may be beneficial in reducing social distance among adolescent males, which may in turn promote help-seeking and help-providing intentions. Future research using experimental manipulations of adolescents’ continuum beliefs could help to clarify these potentially causal relationships.