3.1 Health and Well-being Questionbank

Morales and Jensen (2020) investigated how stigma affects willingness to seek treatment for depression. Their aim was to examine whether negative attitudes toward therapy predicted lower treatment-seeking behaviour.

A sample of 400 university students completed anonymous surveys about their attitudes toward mental health treatment and whether they had ever sought therapy. Questions assessed perceived stigma (“Most people think less of someone who goes to therapy”) and personal stigma (“I would feel embarrassed if I sought therapy”).

Results showed that high stigma—especially personal stigma—was strongly associated with lower willingness to seek treatment.

[Note: Fictionalised but based on Corrigan’s stigma research.]

Source 1: Graph showing results of a study in which students from different countries were asked to complete an anxiety scale (scores converted to percentage of students showing high anxiety symptoms). All participants used social media for at least 3 hours per day over the past month.

Source 2: Researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 university students who reported struggling with mental health. Interviews focused on their experiences with social media. Responses were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis.

Source 3: A psychology undergraduate wanted to explore the relationship between social media use and depression. They surveyed 100 students from their university, all of whom they personally knew to be frequent users of Instagram or TikTok. Students self-reported their average hours of social media use per day and completed a self-rated depression scale.

Source 4: Researchers investigated the relationship between daily social media use (in hours) and self-reported loneliness (score from 1 to 100) among 30 university students. r(28) = 0.854, p = 0.007

A community health clinic notices that patients with low serotonin levels often report persistent sadness and low motivation. Doctors are exploring whether this neurotransmitter might be linked to the development of depressive symptoms.

A community health centre investigates how stigma affects people seeking treatment for depression. They notice that clients often worry about being judged negatively by others if they disclose their condition.

A technology company evaluates how stereotype threat may affect women’s performance in coding assessments. They find that when gender stereotypes are highlighted, women’s scores decrease compared to when the task is presented neutrally.