Help-seeking logistical beliefs, which is one type of help-seeking belief, are incorporated into certain medical/health/social scientific theories used to studying health services treatment access. When studying the behavior of seeking help from a mental health professional, “logistical beliefs” is shorthand for “logistical beliefs related to seeking help from a mental health professional.”
Like other mental health help-seeking belief measures, measures of mental health help-seeking logistical beliefs are uncommon. We have been unable to find a measure of mental health help-seeking logistical beliefs in the published literature that is congruent with how this construct is conceptualized in the reasoned action tradition (e.g., Theory of Reasoned Action, Theory of Planned Behavior, Integrated Behavioral Model of Mental Health Help Seeking).
There are measures of mental health help seeking logistical beliefs that exist that, while incongruent with the reasoned action tradition’s measurement guidelines, may provide utility for studying help seeking. For example, Mohr and colleagues (2010) developed and psychometrically evaluated the Perceived Barriers to Psychological Treatment (PBPT) instrument. The 27-item instrument asks respondents to rate the degree to which different problems might make it difficult to seek help from a mental health professional and some of these items assess logistical barriers such as lack of energy/motivation, time constraints, mobility difficulties, and lack of available providers.
Our research team published a paper (Hammer et al., 2024) that developed and documented psychometric evidence of validity for a battery of mental health help seeking measures, for use with a specific group of humans (i.e., undergraduate engineering students studying in the United States). A copy of the mental health help-seeking logistical beliefs measure (called “Beliefs about Barriers and Facilitators” in the article) from that battery can be found in the supplemental material associated with that 2024 article.
Visit the beliefs measures webpage to learn more about the population-specific nature of beliefs measures and what that means for professionals wishing to use such measures in their work.