Work in Progress: Measuring Stigma of Mental Health Conditions and Its Impact in Help-seeking Behaviors among Engineering Students

In this work in progress we explore the relationship between stigma of mental health conditions (MHC) and help-seeking attitudes among engineering students. The prevalence of mental health conditions among college students has been increasing during the last few decades, and it will only be compounded by the challenges currently faced in our society. Nevertheless, it has been documented that college students have commonly experienced multiple obstacles in seeking help for their mental health conditions when they arise. Furthermore, it is known that engineering students are less likely to seek help than students in other fields when in similar circumstances. Stigma of mental health conditions is a persistent societal challenge that deters people from seeking help when needed. Based on the high-stress environment and demanding coursework that has been consciously or subconsciously promoted in the engineering field combined with the obstacles college students commonly face regarding mental health support, we hypothesize that there will be a relationship between stigma of mental health conditions and the likelihood that engineering students will seek help for those conditions. This work explores the relationship between stigma of mental illness and help-seeking attitudes of engineering students using responses from an online survey from 79 students at two institutions. Results show a negative correlation that suggest that higher general stigma levels are associated with lower help-seeking attitudes. In addition, the relationship between students' engineering department diversity orientation and help-seeking attitudes differed between those who had experiences with MHC and those who did not, suggesting that the perceptions of diversity orientation might also differ among the two groups. This is part of an ongoing research project aiming to characterize the dynamics of engineering culture and wellbeing through multiple quantitative and qualitative approaches. Insights from this research will support a better understanding of the prevalence of stigma in the field and a comparison against the general population as well as the assessment of resources available to students to address their mental health challenges.