ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1630323
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrating Health Psychology in Practice: Enhancing Well-being and Improving Health Outcomes Across Diverse ContextsView all 24 articles
The Impact of Self-Stigma on College Students' Attitudes Towards Professional Psychological Help-Seeking: Serial-Mediated Effects of Discrimination Perceptions and Core Self-Evaluations
Provisionally accepted
- Jinhua University Of Vocational Technologj, Jinhua, China
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Purpose: To explore the role of self-stigma as predictor of college students' attitudes toward professional psychological help-seeking, as well as the separate and serial mediating roles of discrimination perceptions and core self-evaluations between the two. Methods: A survey of 574 college students was conducted using the Psychological Help-Seeking Stigma Scale, the Perception of Discrimination Scale, the Core Self-Esteem Scale, and the Attitudes toward Professional Psychological Help-Seeking Scale; descriptive statistics and correlation analyses were conducted using SPSS 25.0; and mediation model tests were conducted using Mplus 8.0. Results: self-stigma negatively predicted college students' attitudes toward professional psychological help-seeking (β = -0.13, p < 0.01), and discrimination perceptions and core self-evaluations had a significant serial mediation between self-stigma and attitudes toward professional psychological help-seeking, with 95% confidence intervals of [-0.06, -0.01] and mediation effect sizes of -0.04. Conclusion: self-stigma can not only directly predict college students' attitudes toward professional psychological help-seeking, but also indirectly predict college students' attitudes toward professional psychological help-seeking through the serial -mediated effects of discrimination perceptions and core self-evaluations.
Keywords: self-stigma, Discrimination perceptions, Core self-evaluation, professional psychological help-seeking attitudes, college students
Received: 17 May 2025; Accepted: 26 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Wu, Qian and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Daoliang Chen, Jinhua University Of Vocational Technologj, Jinhua, China
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