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Article

Open Access

Chinese College Students Seeking Psychological Help From Professionals—Rationally Should but Emotionally not?

Author(s)

Haiping Wang, Yan Ruth Xia

Full-Text PDF Download XML 1244 Views

DOI:10.17265/2159-5526/2017.04.004

Affiliation(s)

East China Normal University, China; University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present research was to investigate the predictors to Chinese college students seeking psychological help from professionals. By surveying 1,408 Chinese college students at five universities in mainland China, the results showed that among the factors examined, problem severity and help-seeking attitudes directly predicted help-seeking intention, while gender and subjective norms had a significant effect on college students’ professional psychological help-seeking intention through help-seeking attitudes. Overall, the model explained 25% and 38.0% (for half-1 and half-2 data sets, respectively) of the variances of help-seeking intention. The results indicated that mainland Chinese college students rationally knew that they should choose to seek such professional help when the problem got severer enough, although they were emotionally reluctant to seek professional psychological help due to negative subjective norms around them. The implications and limitations were discussed.

KEYWORDS

College students, help-seeking, predictors

Cite this paper

Sociology Study, April 2017, Vol. 7, No. 4, 212-222

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