Intention of adolescents to seek professional help for emotional and behavioural difficulties

Much is known about adolescent help seeking for severe mental health problems. Little is currently understood about the professionals that adolescents would seek help from for milder emotional and behavioural difficulties. A self-report questionnaire was completed by 968 adolescents (53% male), aged 13-14 years in school year 9, and 15-16 years in school year 11 (64% male), attending a purposive sample of four medium to large secondary schools in Devon, UK, during February 2005. Questionnaires were completed by adolescents during whole class teaching sessions with all in attendance being willing to participate. However, 39 (4%) responses were uncompleted or incorrectly completed and removed from subsequent analysis. Questionnaires contained a series of commonly experienced difficulties and asked adolescents to indicate who they would seek help from first, if anyone, from a list of professionals identified as common providers of support. Logistic regression analyses indicated that intention to seek help varied between a low of 30% for adolescents in Year 11 on the difficulty 'were arguing all the time with your parents' to a high of 95% for females on the difficulty 'had been unfairly treated or spoken to by a teacher' with Year and Sex influencing each difficulty separately. With the exception of the difficulty 'were feeling "down" for a long time' there was a high degree of discrimination regarding the professional group (School vs. Health) that would be approached for help. With respect to specific professionals, the Form tutor featured prominently across several difficulties involving school, friends and family (range 53-65%), but also significantly across several difficulties suggestive of emotional problems (range 49-61%). General practitioners were commonly identified as providing help with difficulties sleeping (76%), and along with the school nurse with problems concerning health advice (range 38-49%). Findings highlight the influence of Year and Sex, and importance of the Form tutor in adolescent help seeking across the range of difficulties. A need is identified for further training of Form tutors in recognition of their role in supporting the interface between adolescents and services aimed at engaging young people and a recognition by health and social care professionals regarding the importance of this role.