Abstract

Help-seeking behavior involves is the combination of help and seeking, but this is not a straightforward concept, and there are multiple barriers involved in an individual seeking help that depend on the need an individual is seeking help to resolve and other individual characteristics about any given individual. There are many barriers that preclude help-seeking behavior, and the purpose of this paper is to look at demographic barriers that may encourage or inhibit help-seeking behaviors. A sample of data from the CDC Pulse Survey between the dates of March 17^th, 2021 and March 29^th, 2021 were utilized for this study. Information was gathered regarding psychological symptom presentation, use of healthcare services, insurance status, and whether they accessed (mental) healthcare. The data was transformed from frequency data into nominal data that indicated the presence or absence of any one condition. Chi Squared analyses were utilized to identify how each demographic group differentiated within each construct, and correlations were utilized within broad constructs to differentiate if individuals were significantly different from each other. These results demonstrated demographic differences between individuals and how that predicts help-seeking for both medical and psychological care as well as symptom presentation and insurance coverage and significant differences within those groups. The results inform a general standard of care as it relates to different demographic groups and have implications around which treatment procedures would be best applied to which groups of people.

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