When Do Substance Abuse and Psychiatric Problems Lead to Help Seeking?

• In Event: 037 - Section on Sociology of Mental Health Paper Session. Mental Health Services: Contexts and Consequences

Abstract

Decisions to seek help both shape the effectiveness of the health care system and reflect orientations to health care needs and health care services. it is with respect to substance abuse and mental health that the challenges of research about help-seeking are most evident, for both the nature of these putative illnesses and the course of recovery from them is defined in part by the orientation of afflicted individuals to seeking help. Our research contributes to theory and research about help-seeking by investigating the interest in services of formerly homeless veterans diagnosed with substance abuse and psychiatric problems who have enrolled in a federally funded housing program that is administered through VA medical centers. The importance attached to treatment by these veterans who have been homeless and diagnosed with substance abuse and mental health problems is shaped in part by influences predicted by rational choice theories and by theories that focus more on social factors that shape orientations. Even in a social context when there were minimal structural barriers to treatment and considerable support for treatment engagement, the severity of health problems was not the only influence on treatment orientation. Both health beliefs and social connections and backgrounds have to be included in models of orientation to health services.

Authors

• Russell K. Schutt, University of Massachusetts-Boston

• Kristina Jensen, University of Massachusetts-Boston

• Marsha Ellison, University of Massachusetts and Veterans Administration