Gender and opinions about mental illness as predictors of attitudes towardseeking professional psychological help

Help-seeking attitudes have been an important part of research into the kin ds of college students who do and do not seek: psychotherapy. The current s tudy investigated the relationship between students' opinions about mental illness and their attitudes toward seeking professional help. By also using gender as a predictor of help-seeking attitudes, the researchers examined the effects of opinions about mental illness on help-seeking attitudes abov e and beyond well-known gender effects. This is important because opinions about mental illness are the kind of attitudinal variables that should be m ore modifiable than gender identity. The results indicate that females had more positive attitudes toward seeking help than males, and that people's o pinions about mental illness, especially more benevolent, less authoritaria n, less socially restrictive and higher mental hygiene ideology perspective s, accounted for a significant percentage of positive help-seeking attitude s beyond the percentage accounted for by gender.