Help seeking for mental health problems in an adolescent population: the effect of gender.

Background: While the onset of many mental health problems occurs in adolescence, these problems are severely undertreated in this age group. To inform early intervention for adolescents, we investigated the effect of gender and education type on perception of barriers to help seeking, mental health literacy, and the awareness and use of mental health services. Method: A web-based survey using vignettes, open-ended and multiple choice items was administered to upper secondary school students in two counties in Norway. Results: The survey was completed by 1249 students (88% response rate) with an average age of 17.6 years and 56% were female. Compared to males, the females were better in identifying psychological problems of anxiety and trauma, awareness of mental health services (p < 0.001) and perceived more barriers for seeking help (cost and waiting time; p < 0.001). For use of all mental health services, the effect of education type was greater than the effect of gender. Conclusion: For adolescents, gender appears to play a significant, but not exclusive, role in the inclination to seek professional help for mental health problems. We hypothesise that the observed gender difference in use of services is related to the gender difference in awareness of referral pathway services and the influence of parents in help-seeking process.

Psychosis prevalence and physical, metabolic and cognitive co-morbidity: data from the second Australian national survey of psychosis.

BACKGROUND: There are insufficient data from nationwide surveys on the prevalence of specific psychotic disorders and associated co-morbidities. METHOD: The 2010 Australian national psychosis survey used a two-phase design to draw a representative sample of adults aged 18-64 years with psychotic disorders in contact with public treatment services from an estimated resident population of 1 464 923 adults. This paper is based on data from 1642 participants with an International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 psychotic disorder. Its aim is to present estimates of treated prevalence and lifetime morbid risk of psychosis, and to describe the cognitive, physical health and substance use profiles of participants. RESULTS: The 1-month treated prevalence of psychotic disorders was 3.10 cases per 1000 population aged 18-64 years, not accounting for people solely accessing primary care services; lifetime morbid risk was 3.45 per 1000. Mean premorbid intelligence quotient was approximately 0.5 s.d.s below the population mean; current cognitive ability (measured with a digit symbol coding task) was 1.6 s.d.s below the population mean. For both cognitive tests, higher scores were significantly associated with better independent functioning. The prevalence of the metabolic syndrome was high, affecting 60.8% of participants, and pervasive across diagnostic groups. Of the participants, two-thirds (65.9%) were current smokers, 47.4% were obese and 32.4% were sedentary. Of the participants, half (49.8%) had a lifetime history of alcohol abuse/dependence and 50.8% lifetime cannabis abuse/dependence. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight the need for comprehensive, integrative models of recovery to maximize the potential for good health and quality of life for people with psychotic illness.