Web-Based Personalized Normative Feedback to Decrease Stigma and Increase Intentions to Seek Help

Perceived stigma remains an enduring problem that deters help-seeking. Recent trends show an increase in affirming public views about mental health and suicide. We explore whether personalized normative feedback (PNF)—an effective behavioral change intervention for substance use and other behaviors—can increase help-seeking intentions for mental health problems. Drawing adults from a Qualtrics panel, we conducted a pre-experiment (pre- and posttest with no control group) to test the potential efficacy of PNF on help-seeking intentions. We assigned individuals into four subsamples to receive four different PNF messages: (1) having a mental health disorder is nothing to be ashamed of, (2) people with mental health disorders can get better, (3) people who are suicidal can be treated and go on to live successful lives, and (4) people should talk about suicide openly. Simple (unadjusted) differences in help-seeking intention change scores were assessed using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test. We examined the effect of the PNF intervention stratifying by baseline help-seeking intention and baseline mental health condition. Most people held certain affirming views about mental health disorders and suicide but underestimated how many others would have affirming views. All four web-based PNF messages slightly increased help-seeking intentions. After stratifying by baseline help-seeking intentions, all conditions improved among participants who reported “extremely unlikely” or “somewhat unlikely” to seek help at baseline, whereas among those who reported “likely” or “neutral,” PNF did not appear to have any effect. PNF appears to be a promising intervention to increase help-seeking intentions, which may lead more people to receive treatment. Future research should focus on developing randomized controlled trials to test the efficacy of PNF with convincing messages and referent groups.