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Military personnel pride themselves on being tough and resilient, but even they are not immune to mental health issues.
Psychology professor Jason Siegel and Leidos/Naval Health Research Center scientist Karen Tannenbaum, who recently earned her Ph.D., are collaborating on a federally funded research project that hopes to provide solutions. ing. The goal is to increase help-seeking among early-career service members with depression, reduce self-stigma and public stigma against help-seeking, and increase the willingness of fellow service members to provide social support. .
“Military members are particularly reluctant to disclose or report information about mental health concerns or seek treatment due to the stigma of seeking help and fear of possible negative effects on their military careers. “It could be,” Siegel said. “Some people don’t realize how difficult it is for people with depression to seek help.”
This study leverages existing evidence-based strategies that Siegel et al. have used in previous studies. One perhaps counterintuitive finding was that messages directly encouraging depressed patients to seek help often have the opposite effect and increase the likelihood of negative outcomes.
“The same thinking that negatively biases how people with depression process information also negatively biases their thinking about help-seeking and messages encouraging help-seeking,” Siegel says. he said. “Therefore, there are few groups more difficult to convince than people experiencing depression.”
Siegel and Tannenbaum will develop and test a help-seeking behavioral training that for the first time combines two techniques employed in previous studies: self-distancing and mistargeted communication. In layman’s terms, self-distancing asks participants to see their depression issues through the eyes of a neutral third party. Another approach asks participants to think about their future selves as a source of advice. In previous research, both approaches yielded better results than directly prompting someone to seek help.
Miscommunication refers to messages that appear to be directed at someone else. “It is widely believed that communication is more effective in changing a listener’s opinion when it is asked inadvertently than when it is spoken intentionally,” Professors Elaine Walster and Leon Festinger said. was theorized in 1962. A similar experiment in 2015 found that this approach increased intentions to seek help among people suffering from depression.
“This project gives us a unique opportunity to support those who sacrifice themselves for their country,” Siegel said. “Furthermore, if successful, we will be able to offer this program to the general public. We undertake this work because we believe that our research will be of use to others. I’m lucky to have it.”
