Abstract
The present study examined attitudes towards seeking professional psychological help for Asian, African, Latino, and White Americans. Help-seeking attitudes were examined as two separate constructs, approach and avoidance attitudes, and served as the main dependent variables. The relationship of age, gender, ethnicity, previous mental health use, sense of coherence, level of perceived stress, and problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies to approach and avoidance help-seeking attitudes were examined. Results showed that age, previous personal and indirect experience with mental health services and problem-focused coping were positively related to approach attitudes; women reported higher approach attitudes than men, and Latinos reported higher approach attitudes than Asian and White Americans. Results also showed that age, previous personal experience with mental health services, sense of coherence, and problem-focused coping were negatively related, but emotion-focused coping was positively related to avoidance attitudes; men reported higher avoidance attitudes than women, and Asian and African Americans reported higher avoidance attitudes than Latinos and White Americans. Previous personal experience with mental health services was the strongest predictor of approach attitudes, while emotion-focused coping was the strongest predictor of avoidance attitudes.