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Past research indicates that self-distancing through perspective-taking may increase help-seeking intentions among some people with depression. The current pre-registered study tested the effect of self-distancing through mental time-travel on help-seeking attitudes, intentions, outcome expectations, and self-stigma. Participants with elevated depressive symptomatology who had not yet sought help for current feelings of depression (n = 859) were randomly assigned to a self-distancing writing task, a self-immersive writing task, or a control condition. Help-seeking attitudes were significantly higher in the distancing condition than in the immersive or control conditions. Additionally, self-distancing through mental time-travel resulted in higher help-seeking intentions compared to the control condition but was not significantly different from the immersive condition. The immersive condition was not significantly different from the control for any outcomes. Interactions show that both self-distancing and the immersive task weakened the negative relationship between depression severity and help-seeking attitudes and intentions. Extending scholarship investigating self-distancing and help-seeking intentions, results show that self-distancing through mental time-travel can result in more favorable help-seeking attitudes compared to a control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical residents experiencing depression can cause life-threatening harm to themselves and their patients. Treatment is available, but many do not seek help. The current set of three studies investigated whether depressive symptomatology in and of itself served as a help-seeking barrier—and whether expectations of help-seeking benefits provided insight into why this occurred. Nine waves of cross-sectional data were collected from medical residents across several different hospitals in the United States. There was a large negative association between levels of depressive symptomatology and help-seeking intentions (H1) in Studies 1 and 3. In Study 2, this association was significant for one of the two help-seeking measures. For all analyses, studies, and measures, there was a large negative association between residents' levels of depressive symptomatology and agreement that seeking help will lead to positive outcomes (H2). Likewise, there was a moderately large indirect effect for all analyses, studies, and measures such that the association between levels of depressive symptomatology and help-seeking intentions occurred through less favorable expectations of help-seeking benefits (H3). Lower agreement of the benefits associated with help-seeking explained between 43 and 65% of depressive symptomatology's negative association with help-seeking intentions across studies. The current findings indicate that depressive symptomatology itself represents a help-seeking barrier and underscore the importance of help-seeking expectations in explaining why this occurs. If future studies reveal a causal relationship between the perceived benefits of help-seeking and help-seeking intentions, then increasing such expectations could offer a potential path for increasing resident help-seeking. • The negative bias associated with depression extends to thoughts about help-seeking. • Medical residents with higher depression levels report lower help-seeking intentions. • Residents with higher depression expect less favorable help-seeking outcomes. • Help-seeking expectations partly explain the depression/help-seeking association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The current set of pre‐registered studies tested the effect of savoring a high‐arousal (exciting) or low‐arousal (calm) positive experience on help‐seeking intentions among people with heightened depressive symptomatology. Methods: Across all three studies, participants with heightened depressive symptomatology who had not yet sought help were randomly assigned to complete a 6‐minute writing task where they reflected on an exciting memory, a calm memory, or what they did today and yesterday. Results: Savoring an exciting memory was associated with significantly greater arousal than savoring a calm memory and the control condition (Study 1; N = 218). Both savoring conditions were associated with greater positive emotion than the control condition (Study 2; N = 193). In Study 3 (N = 1,238), savoring an exciting memory, when compared to the control condition, increased help‐seeking intentions, whereas savoring a calm memory did not. Conclusions: The current studies support the use of high‐arousal, rather than low‐arousal, positive emotions to increase help‐seeking intentions among people with depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study explored depression, help‐seeking, and academic struggles among graduate students. Focus groups were conducted with graduate students who self‐reported currently or previously experiencing depression. Mental health, help‐seeking, and campus mental health culture were discussed. Participants described the emergence or reemergence of mental health challenges. Although some reported feeling comfortable discussing depression with friends, participants noted minimal institutional openness about mental health, being expected to be mentally and physically exhausted, and fear of stigmatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The current research effort used two experimental studies to assess whether a savoring‐based, positive emotion infusion (PEI) could increase help‐seeking intentions among individuals with elevated depressive symptomatology and whether this relationship would be mediated by positive emotion, arousal, and perceptions of personal control. Methods: In Study 1, participants with elevated depressive symptomatology, recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N = 135), were randomly assigned to complete a 6‐minute savoring or control writing task followed by a help‐seeking intentions scale. Study 2 participants (N = 136) were randomly assigned to the same tasks, but a scale assessing positive emotion, arousal, and personal control was added. Results: Study 1 indicated a direct effect; those who savored reported greater help‐seeking intentions compared to control participants. Study 2 revealed an indirect effect of savoring on help‐seeking intentions through greater positive emotion but not through greater arousal or perceptions of personal control. Conclusion: Together, these results offer additional support for continued research on PEIs, and specifically, savoring‐based PEIs. Although the experimental manipulations may be limited in regard to their ecological validity, for those seeking to create interventions, these studies offer a novel and efficacious approach for motivating individuals with elevated depressive symptomatology to seek help. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three online studies assessed a new approach for increasing help seeking among people with depressive symptomatology (i.e. a positive emotion infusion, PEI). A PEI refers to the induction of positive emotion such that people’s mindsets – including perceptions of help-seeking – are temporarily altered. Study 1 (n = 382) indicated that help-seeking intentions are negatively correlated with depressive symptomatology and positively correlated with elevation and gratitude. Studies 2 and 3 implemented fully randomized experimental designs. In Study 2, two elevation-based (Study 2a, n = 285) and two gratitude-based (Study 2b, n = 338) emotion inductions increased levels of elevation and gratitude, respectively. Results of Study 3a (n = 390) indicate a causal relationship between experiencing the story-based elevation induction and increased help-seeking intentions. The two gratitude-based PEIs (Study 3b, n = 466) were unsuccessful at influencing help-seeking; auxiliary analyses indicate the possibility of iatrogenic effects. Overall, the potential of PEIs was indicated, as was need for caution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interventions that increase help-seeking among people with depression have the potential to save lives. Several efforts have been impressively successful; however, research has also chronicled inconsistent results, with some endeavors indicating boomerang effects. The goal of the current analysis is to synthesize select findings from cognitive theorizing on depression with persuasion scholarship to explain how and why the combination of unfavorable attitudes toward help-seeking, attitudes that are increasingly resistant to influence, psychological reactance and cognitive errors can result in challenging responses to messages encouraging help-seeking among people with depression. In addition, we highlight the importance of utilizing theory-based approaches to circumvent resistance to persuasion and provide an explanation as to why the provision of immediate help-seeking mechanisms could be a key aspect of successful intervention efforts. We also stress the importance of formative research and pilot testing and warn against the potentially harmful error of assessing messages targeting people with depression on those without heightened levels of depressive symptomatology. Ideally, this effort will draw attention to the challenge of persuading people with depression to seek help and also motivate social psychologists to consider the ways they can use their craft to positively influence the health andwell-being of people with depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Guided by Beck's (1967) cognitive theory of depression, we assessed whether perceived family functioning (PFF) mediated the relationship between depressive symptomatology and help-seeking inclinations.Methods: Study 1 included 130 Spanish-Dominant Hispanics and Study 2 included 124 Non-Hispanic Whites obtained using online crowd sourcing. Participants completed measures of depressive symptomatology, PFF, and several scales measuring aspects of help seeking inclinations and self-stigma. Study 2 also included an experiment. With an eye toward potential future interventions, we assessed the malleability of PFF. Specifically, participants were randomly assigned to recall positive or negative family experiences and then PFF was measures for a second time.Results: Both studies found PFF mediates the relationship between depressive symptomatology and the help seeking scales. Among non-depressed people, the positive manipulation improved PFF; however, among participants with elevated depressive symptomatology, writing about a positive family experience worsened PFF.Limitation: With the exception of the experiment, most of the data were cross-sectional. For the experiment, it is possible that different manipulations or primes could have different effects.Conclusion: Whether investigating responses from Spanish-Dominant Hispanics or Non-Hispanic Whites, PFF mediates the negative relationship between heightened depressive symptomatology and familial help-seeking beliefs, as well as self-stigma. However, even though the mediation analysis offers preliminary support that increasing PFF can potentially increase help-seeking behaviors of Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White people with depression, the results of the interaction analysis, specifically the negative impact of writing about positive family memories on people with elevated depression, illustrates the challenges of persuading people with depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies that used positive emotion infusions (PEIs) to increase help-seeking for depression found initial support for the approach (Siegel & Thomson, 2016; Straszewski & Siegel, 2018, 2020). However, as people with depression experience negative biases that may be maximized when self-relevance is high (Clark et al., 1999), a potential way to maximize the effect of the PEI approach may be to reduce self-focus. We used two preregistered studies (US; 2/19/19 to 9/25/19) to identify the strongest version of a savoring writing task for the current context (Study 1) and test it in the form of a savoring-public service announcement (Study 2; S-PSA). Study 1 (N = 1308) compared five savoring writing tasks that varied in self-focus to a control writing task: vicarious, self-distanced, relational, combination, and personal savoring. Study 2 (N = 1238) compared a relational S-PSA to a comparison PSA and a basic control video on help-seeking attitudes, intentions, and behavior. In Study 1, relational savoring was associated with greater help-seeking intentions than the combination savoring condition among all participants and greater help-seeking intentions than the control among participants who self-reported paying full attention during the study. In Study 2, the S-PSA did not perform better than the comparison PSA or basic control video on the outcome measures. The present research highlights three important takeaways. 1) Researchers should continue to explore relational savoring as an approach to increase help-seeking for depression. 2) Similar to findings of prior depression help-seeking studies, crowdsourcing platforms may be useful for testing informational videos but less appropriate for testing videos that require deep levels of thinking for people experiencing heightened depressive symptomatology. 3) From a theoretical and methodological standpoint, these studies underscore the value of conceptual replications using multiple methods. • Among people experiencing depression, five savoring writing tasks were compared. • The relational savoring task outperformed the others and guided PSA-video development. • The PSA video did not outperform comparison videos on help-seeking outcomes. • MTurk may not be suited for testing cognitive task videos to increase help-seeking. • The value of conceptual replications with multiple methods is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three studies explored whether self-distancing, a method where the self is treated as an other, can impact help-seeking among those with depression. Self-distancing was expected to reduce the negative biases associated with depression by minimizing self-relevance through taking the perspective of an objective other. We hypothesized that when thinking about a past experience of help-seeking, a selfdistancing prompt would cause increased help-seeking intentions and more favorable help-seeking outcome expectations. The influence of selfdistancing on the self-stigma of help-seeking was also explored. Participants were randomly assigned to write (Studies 1 and 3) or watch a video (Study 2) where they were prompted to think about helpseeking from their own perspective or an objective other's perspective. Studies 2 and 3 were pre-registered on the Open Science Framework. In Study 1, self-distancing increased help-seeking intentions but did not influence help-seeking expectations or self-stigma. The a priori hypotheses were not supported in Study 2 or 3. However, exploratory analyses of Study 3 revealed an interaction between condition and level of depressive symptomatology indicating that the distancing condition weakened the relationship between higher levels of depressive symptomatology and lower help-seeking intentions, and between higher levels of depressive symptomatology and higher self-stigma. Additionally, analyses of written responses indicated participants in the distancing condition were significantly less likely to write responses void of positive content. Although a priori hypotheses were not supported, further research is warranted as results indicate the potential for using self-distancing approaches to increasing help-seeking among some people with depressive symptomatology. • Three studies examined self-distancing in people with depression. • Self-distancing reduces likelihood of purely negative thoughts. • Self-distancing weakens relationship between depression and help-seeking intentions. • Self-distancing weakens relationship between depression and self-stigma. • Self-distancing may be most effective for people with severe depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]