Help-seeking patterns for suicidal and non-suicidal problems in two high school samples

Few distressed young people seek professional psychological help for either personal-emotional problems or suicidal ideation. This paper describes two studies that have examined help-seeking patterns in two contrasting high school populations. Two hundred and sixty four Il1awarra public high school students and 307 Queensland private high school students completed a questionnaire measuring intentions to seek help from a variety of fonnal and informal sources, in addition to no-one for personal-emotional and suicidal problems. Students in both samples indicated they would seek help from different sources of help for different problem types, but friends were rated as the most likely source ofhe1p. Seeking help from noone was a preference for many students for suicidal and non-suicidal problems. Helpseeking patterns are discussed in terms of implications for prevention and early intervention.