Barriers to Mental Health Treatment: Results from the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) Surveys

By L. Andrade, Jordi Alonso, Z. Mneimneh, J. Wells, A. Al-Hamzawi, G. Borges, E. Bromet, R. Bruffaerts, G. de Girolamo, R. de Graaf and 21 more. Psychological Medicine, 2013

1,034 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background To examine barriers to initiation and continuation of mental health treatment among individuals with common mental disorders. Method Data were from the World Health Organization (WHO) World Mental Health (WMH) surveys. Representative household samples were interviewed face to face in 24 countries. Reasons to initiate and continue treatment were examined in a subsample (n = 636 78) and analyzed at different levels of clinical severity. Results Among those with a DSM-IV disorder in the past 12 months, low perceived need was the most common reason for not initiating treatment and more common among moderate and mild than severe cases. Women and younger people with disorders were more likely to recognize a need for treatment. A desire to handle the problem on one's own was the most common barrier among respondents with a disorder who perceived a need for treatment (63.8%). Attitudinal barriers were much more important than structural barriers to both initiating and continuing treatment. However, attitudinal barriers dominated for mild-moderate cases and structural barriers for severe cases. Perceived ineffectiveness of treatment was the most commonly reported reason for treatment drop-out (39.3%), followed by negative experiences with treatment providers (26.9% of respondents with severe disorders). Conclusions Low perceived need and attitudinal barriers are the major barriers to seeking and staying in treatment among individuals with common mental disorders worldwide. Apart from targeting structural barriers, mainly in countries with poor resources, increasing population mental health literacy is an important endeavor worldwide.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Pharmacology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/94d8eed38c956e5e308a44137b33879c9de8e1f2

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In Applied Psychology

1. Ho Ming Lau
2. Abdulmotaleb El Saddik
3. Jiangen He
4. Yuting Liao

In Social Psychology

1. Edmund Sonuga-Barke
2. Stephen V. Faraone
3. Jiangen He
4. Yuting Liao

Citations in the corpus

• Serious Games and Gamification for Mental Health: Current Status and Promising Directions (2017, background): “People often do not seek help for mental health issues until these are relatively serious (22), in which case a game may be perceived as trivializing or inappropriate (Fleming et al.”
• User Experiences of Social Support From Companion Chatbots in Everyday Contexts: Thematic Analysis (2020, background): “More importantly, this suggests that artificial agents could be a means to help increase access to mental health services, given that barriers such as perceived public stigma, finance, and lack of service often prevent individuals from seeking out and obtaining needed mental health care [49,50].”
• An Empathy-Driven, Conversational Artificial Intelligence Agent (Wysa) for Digital Mental Well-Being: Real-World Data Evaluation Mixed-Methods Study (2018, background): “The WHO World Mental Health Surveys show that apart from perceived stigma, structural barriers such as finance and lack of service availability were the most reported barriers to treatment among those with severe disorders [14].”
• Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (2015, background): “Other WMH research on treatment seeking for mental disorders has shown that the most important barrier is failure to recognize that the symptoms of the disorder constitute evidence of an ‘illness’ that could profit from treatment (Andrade et al. 2014).”