Anxiety and Perceptions of Stigma Surrounding the Use of Mental Health Resources Among Adults Aged 50�64

Abstract

Older adults (defined as those aged 50 and older) face various additional challenges when accessing mental health services including but not limited to financial costs, transportation, and caregiving responsibilities. However, older adults have been significantly underrepresented in psychological research particularly in research pertaining to social and psychological factors that influence an older person's decision to seek out mental health services. Anxiety, self-stigma, and public stigma were investigated to expand scientific knowledge on their relationship with the use of mental health resources by those aged 50�64. The present study utilized a quantitative study design with online snowball sampling for data collection. The present study had 109 responses with 84 participants (84% female, 16% male) completing all provided questions (i.e., demographic questions, GAD-7, SSOSH, PSOSH). A multiple logistic regression and moderator analysis were used to analyze the data. As hypothesized in this study, the data supported a positively correlated relationship between anxiety and use of mental health resources and a negatively correlated relationship between public stigma and the use of mental health resources. The study did not support the hypothesis that higher levels of self-stigma would be negatively correlated with the use of mental health resources. Future studies could investigate the impacts of stigma and the likelihood of using mental health resources among different generations. The implications of this study exhibit the need for diversity among participant groups (i.e., age, race/ethnicity, gender identity) to understand the prominence of stigma as a barrier to accessing mental health resources.