e-International Journal of Educational Research

Abstract

Adolescence is a stormy period, whereby the individual themselves and the people around them carefully focus on the individual. During the process of education, the phase where visible and invisible problems of adolescence are intensified is the period of secondary education (high school). In these secondary education institutions, noticing the problems of adolescents and making necessary interventions on time become significant. Despite the abundance of studies on the problems that high school student's face, the lack in the studies on their willingness for the solution of their problems is striking. Moreover, this study becomes significant in the identification of problem areas experienced by adolescents, who have the tendency to hide themselves, and their psychological symptoms. In this way, this study is also crucial, since it enables psychological counselors at schools to reach out for risk groups more easily. In this study, the relationship between high school students' willingness to seek psychological help and their psychological symptoms is examined.
Method: Relational screening model is used in this research, which aims to analyze high school students' willingness to seek psychological help with respect to different variables and to identify the relationship between psychological symptoms and their willingness to seek psychological help. In this research, convenience sampling method is utilized in identifying the study group. During the 2013-2014 school year, students from four high schools (Kangal Koç Anadolu Lisesi, Kangal Lisesi, Kangan İmam Hatip Lisesi and Kangal Meslek Lisesi), located in the city of Sivas, in Kangal district and two high schools in the city of Malatya (Malatya Ticaret Meslek Lisesi and Konak Anadolu Lisesi) constitute the study group of this research. 303 (51.6 %) of the students are female and 284 (48.4 %) of the students are male. The questionnaire containing “Brief Symptom Inventory”, “Willingness to Seek Counseling Scale” and personal information form were used as data collection tools. In this research, Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of the “willingness to seek counseling scale” is calculated as .81.
Findings: High school students' willingness to seek psychological help [t(585)=1.96; p <.05] displays significant difference with respect to gender. The mean point of female students' ( =23.52) willingness to seek psychological help is higher than the mean point of male students ( =22.04). High school students' willingness to seek psychological help [t(585)=-1,748; p >.05] does not display a significant difference with respect to the status of having previous psychological help. As a result of the ANOVA test, high school students' willingness to seek psychological help displays a significant variance with respect to class level [F(3,583)= .308; p >.05]. There is significant positive relationship at the level of (p=<.01) between willingness to seek psychological help and obsessive-compulsive symptoms (r=.22), paranoid ideation (r=.21), anxiety (r=.21), depression (r=.18), hostility (r=.17), interpersonal sensitivity (r=.17), psychoticism (r=.16), additional scala (r=.16), phobic-anxiety (r=.15) and somatization (r=.15). In the first phase of the stepwise regression, it is seen that the variable of obsessive-compulsive explains 5 % [F(1,585)= 30.570; p <.001] of high school students' willingness to seek psychological help. In the second phase of the stepwise regression analysis, the variable of paranoid ideation is inserted along with the variable of obsessive-compulsive. Together, variables of obsessive-compulsive and paranoid ideation explain 6 % [F(2,584)= 18.856; p <.001] of willingness to seek psychological help.
Conclusion: Female students are more willing to seek psychological help than male students. When the correlation between willingness to seek psychological help and psychological symptoms is examined, it is seen that there is a positive relationship between psychological symptoms, with all sub-dimensions, and willingness to seek psychological help. This finding shows that as psychological symptoms increase, it also increases psychological help seeking willingness. In the stepwise regression analysis, carried out within the scope of this study, it is found that obsessive-compulsive symptoms and paranoid ideation, which are sub-dimensions of psychological symptoms, explain psychological help seeking willingness at a significant level.
Keywords: Psychological help, Help seeking, Willingness, Psychological Symptoms, High school students