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In any given year, approximately 20% of Canadians suffer from mental health problems, and treatment-seeking has been shown to be least likely in older adults. Although decades of research have been devoted to help-seeking behaviors, barriers to accessing treatment, and service utilization models, reasons why many older adults with mental health problems do not seek professional help are not fully understood. Theoretical models can be helpful in improving our understanding of why people do or do not seek help, and the Network Episode Model (NEM) (Pescosolido et al., 1998) suggests that there are three unique pathways into treatment: choice (willingness), coercion (force or pressure) or muddling through (either ‘drifting around’ between services, or having someone other than the client take over the help-seeking journey). This study aimed to capture the dynamic process of older Manitobans’ help-seeking pathways, in order to better understand the experiences of clients from their initial mental health concerns, through to a clinical psychologist’s office. The current study examined two objectives: 1) classifying participants' pathways into treatment according to the NEM, and 2) exploring whether the pathways should represent distinct treatment journeys (i.e., choice, coercion, or muddling through), or if they are best conceptualized as co-occurring processes (i.e., choice, coercion, and muddling through). Utilizing secondary qualitative data from three previous studies (N = 35), objective one was examined using directed content analysis, to classify older Manitobans’ pathways into treatment using the NEM. Participants’ sought help for a variety of reasons, including anxiety and mood disorders, coping with life stressors and physical illness, and caregiver stress. Findings highlight that the majority (n=21, 60%) of the sample entered care choicefully (willingly accessing treatment), with 42.9% of that group involving ‘others’ in their treatment-seeking, by way of