Social support refers to the receipt of emotional, instrumental, and informational assistance from others (Langford et al., 1997). Systematic reviews indicate that social support’s relationship with mental health help seeking is complex (e.g., Han et al., 2018; Martinez et al., 2020).
For more details about this help-seeking determinant, please read Hammer and colleagues (2024), from which a portion of the information about this construct is excerpted.
A description of available social support measures can be found on the Structural Forces Measures page.