Seeking Mental Health Care after Interpersonal Traumatization

Many people experience a traumatic event at least once in their lifetime. But only a fraction of those traumatized and in need of mental health care receive psychosocial care or treatment. This may be due to barriers people experience within the help-seeking process. The individual help-seeking process is consequently highly relevant for any mental health care for trauma survivors. Understanding why people refrain from asking for help or delay the help-seeking process is central to understanding help-seeking after traumatization. The book summarizes the available data on help-seeking after traumatization, discusses relevant theories of helpseeking and presents an integrative model of mental health help-seeking after interpersonal traumatizazion. This is followed by quantitative data of a study testing the integrative model and a content analysis of perceived barriers and promoters in help-seeking reported by survivors of interpersonal traumatization and professionals providing help for this population. Finally the model s implications for improving access to mental health care for survivors of interpersonal traumatization is dicussed.