Adolescents who need help the most are the least likely to seek it: the relationship between low emotional competence and low intention to seek help

It has been found that university students who were the least skilled at managing their emotions also had the lowest intention of seeking help from a variety of nonprofessional sources (e.g. family and friends). The present study sought to extend these findings by focusing on adolescents, examining a larger number of emotional competencies, and exploring the possibility that social support explains the relationship between emotional competence and help-seeking. A total of 137 adolescents (aged 16±18) completed an anonymous survey that assessed social support, emotional competencies, and intention to seek help from a variety of professional and nonprofessional sources. As expected, adolescents who were low in emotional awareness, and who were poor at identifying, describing, and managing their emotions, were the least likely to seek help from nonprofessional sources and had the highest intention of refusing help from everyone. However, low emotional competence was not related to intention to seek help from professional sources (e.g. mental health professionals). The significant results involving nonprofessional sources were only partially explained by social support, suggesting that even adolescents who had high quality support were less likely to make use of that support if they were low in emotional competence. It would seem reasonable to assume that people with low emotional competence would have the highest intention to seek help with their emotional problems because they feel less capable of handling those emotions on their own. However, Ciarrochi and Deane (2001) report the somewhat counterintuitive finding that university students who were the least skilled at managing their emotions also had the lowest D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ U n i v e r s i t y o f W o l l o n g o n g ] A t : 0 3 : 0 5 1 1 D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 9 174 Joseph Ciarrochi et al. intention to seek help. The present study sought to replicate and extend these findings in a number of ways. First, we sought to assess the generality of Ciarrochi and Deane’s (2001) findings by focusing on adolescents rather than university students and by expanding the range of emotional competencies examined. Second, we sought to examine the possibility that quality of social support mediates the relationship between emotional competence and intention to seek help. To seek or not to seek help Seeking and receiving help from mental health professionals can assist in the reduction of distressing psychological symptoms (Bergin & Garfield, 1994), yet few who experience significant psychological distress seek professional help (e.g. Boldero & Fallon, 1995; Carlton & Deane, 2000; Deane et al., 2001b; Meehan et al., 1992). A recent survey of over 10,600 persons found that while more than one in five adults meet the criteria for a mental health disorder, 62% of persons with a mental disorder did not seek any professional help for mental health problems (Andrews et al., 1999, p. 37). This striking statistic raises serious concerns for people in general, and particularly for youth, as the same report found that mental health disorders were most prevalent among young people. While few young people seek professional psychological help, most will seek help from a variety of other sources such as family members, friends, and teachers (Boldero & Fallon, 1995; Offer et al., 1991). Up to 90% of adolescents tell their peers rather than a professional of their distress (Kalafat, 1997; Kalafat & Elias, 1995). What determines whether or not young people seek help? Research has identified a number of factors that contribute to help-seeking behaviour, including being female, availability of social support (Rickwood & Braithwaite, 1994), expectations about help-seeking outcome (Simoni et al., 1991), and fear of psychological treatment (Kushner & Sher, 1989). Surprisingly, little research has examined the relationship between basic emotional competencies (e.g. emotion perception, awareness, and management) and people’s intention to seek help. Emotional competence Emotional competence (or intelligence) has generally been defined as the ability to identify and describe emotions, the ability to understand emotions, and the ability to manage emotions in an effective and nondefensive manner (Ciarrochi et al., 2001c,d; Mayer et al., 1999). There has been a substantial amount of research on emotional competencies in the last decade (Ciarrochi et al., 2000, 2001a,b,c,d; Mayer et al., 1999; Salovey et al., 1993; Salovey & Mayer, 1990). Despite some initial concern about the psychometric properties of early emotional competence measures (Davies et al., 1998), recent research suggests that some measures of emotional competence are reliable, distinct from other, well-established measures, and predict important behaviour (Ciarrochi et al., 2000, 2001a,b,c,d, in press; Mayer et al., 1999; Schutte et al., 1998; see methods section for brief review). D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ U n i v e r s i t y o f W o l l o n g o n g ] A t : 0 3 : 0 5 1 1 D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 9 Emotion and help-seeking in adolescents 175 There is also evidence that some aspects of the measures correlate with measures of hopelessness (Ciarrochi & Deane, 2001a; Ciarrochi et al., 2001c). Specifically, people who report being poor at identifying and managing emotions also tend to report feeling more hopeless about the future (Ciarrochi et al., 2001c). In addition, people who feel hopeless express lower intention to seek help (Ciarrochi & Deane, 2001a; Deane et al., 2001b). Thus, it is possible that any relationship we find between emotional competence and intention to seek help is explainable in terms of hopelessness. We will examine this possibility by looking at the relationship between emotional competence and help-seeking while controlling for levels of hopelessness. The present study will measure a wide variety of emotional competencies and focus on measures that past research suggests are both reliable and valid (e.g. see Ciarrochi et al., 2001c, for a review; see also methods section). We will assess (1) the ability to identify and describe emotions (Bagby et al., 1994), (2) the awareness of emotional complexity in self and others (Lane et al., 1990), and (3) the ability to manage emotions in both the self and others (Ciarrochi et al., 2000; Schutte et al., 1998). We have intentionally avoided the use of the term emotional intelligence in this paper because we do not want to make the questionable assumption that the measures used in this study assess a type of intelligence (e.g. Ciarrochi et al., 2001c,d; Davies et al., 1998). Our primary focus is on individual differences in people’s skill at identifying, describing, and managing emotions. We make no assumptions about whether such differences are due to a type of intelligence. Is emotional competence associated with intention to seek help? We expect people with low emotional competence to have lower intention to seek help from a variety of nonprofessional sources (e.g. family, friends, and teachers). There are several possible reasons for this relationship. First, people low in emotional competence tend to have fewer sources of social support from extended family and friends and thus ought to have fewer opportunities for seeking help (Ciarrochi et al., 2001b). In addition, those low in emotional competence may have had less successful help-seeking experiences in the past (Ciarrochi & Deane, 2001), and these past experiences may make them less willing to seeking help in the future. Finally, we have speculated that people low in emotional competence may feel too embarrassed about their perceived lack of competence to seek help. Consistent with the prediction that low emotional competence is associated with lower intention to seek help, Ciarrochi and Deane (2001a) found that those who were less skilled at managing emotions were also less likely to seek help from family and friends for both emotional problems and suicidal ideation. These relationships held even after controlling for hopelessness. The relationship tended to involve informal help-sources (e.g. parents, friends) rather than formal sources (i.e. doctor, mental health professional). One potential explanation for this pattern of results is that emotionally competent people have more social support from informal sources (parents, friends), and that such informal support increases their likelihood of seeking help from informal sources of help. D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ U n i v e r s i t y o f W o l l o n g o n g ] A t : 0 3 : 0 5 1 1 D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 9 176 Joseph Ciarrochi et al. Past research is limited in that it focused on only a few competencies and did not evaluate the possibility that social support could explain the relationships between emotional competence and help-seeking. The present study will remedy both of these limitations.