Help-Seeking Starts at Home: The Role of Parental Support and Self Efficacy in Adolescents Attitudes Toward Psychological Help-Seeking

Background and Objectives: Adolescence is a critical developmental period marked by increased vulnerability to mental health challenges, yet many adolescents are reluctant to seek psychological help. Despite increasing awareness of mental health issues, stigma, lack of access to care, and negative attitudes toward mental health services continue to serve as major barriers. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable, as they often rely on external support systems, especially family, to recognize and respond to their psychological needs. Mental health challenges among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are rising, yet psychological help-seeking remains low. Guided by social cognitive theory, this study explores how perceived parental support influence adolescents' attitudes toward seeking psychological help in Ghana, a low-resource setting where stigma and structural barriers to seeking psychological help persist.

Methods: We used data from the Ghana Youth Mental Health Survey (2024), a cross-sectional survey of n=1519 adolescents aged 10–20 in urban and peri-urban communities. We measured perceived parental support and attitudes toward psychological help-seeking using validated scales adapted for the Ghanaian context. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models tested associations while controlling for age, gender, and adolescent resiliency levels.

Results: Our results revealed that perceived parental support was significantly associated with more favorable psychological help-seeking attitudes (b= .11, p < .001). Self-efficacy among adolescents was found to be significantly associated with psychological help-seeking attitudes (b= .30, p <.001). Adolescent’s s age was also significantly associated with psychological help-seeking attitudes with a unit increase in age being associated with a decrease in the likelihood of seeking psychological help (b= -.12, p <.05). Adolescent girls were more likely to seek psychological help than their male counterparts (b= .44, p <.01).

Conclusions and Implications: This study highlights the powerful role of the family context particularly perceived parental support, in shaping adolescents’ openness to seeking mental health care in Ghana. Adolescents who reported feeling supported by their parents were more likely to express positive attitudes toward engaging with mental health services, especially when they also felt confident in their own ability to manage mental health challenges. These findings point to a synergistic effect, where both interpersonal (parental support) and intrapersonal (self-efficacy) factors contribute to a more receptive stance toward help-seeking.

From a practice perspective, the results suggest that effective youth mental health interventions in low-resource settings should extend beyond individual-focused approaches to include family-level components. Engaging parents or caregivers as allies in mental health promotion can improve adolescent well-being and support early intervention. Programs that foster open parent–child communication, reduce stigma, and build mental health literacy may be especially impactful.

Policy implications include investing in family-strengthening initiatives within national adolescent mental health strategies. These findings also support culturally responsive interventions that reflect local beliefs, support systems, and caregiving structures in sub-Saharan Africa. This research contributes to decolonizing global mental health and advancing more locally grounded pathways to care by centering African youths’ voices and contexts.