Help-seeking for stressful events among Chinese college students in Taiwan: Roles of gender, prior history of counseling, and help-seeking attitudes

The present study examined the help-seeking behavior that Chinese college students used to cope with stressful events and the roles that gender, previous counseling experience, and help-seeking attitudes played in predicting informal and formal help-seeking behavior. Nine hundred ninety-five first year Chinese college students at a private university in Taiwan completed the survey. The results revealed that most Chinese students sought help from informal helpers as compared to from professional helpers for academic/career, interpersonal, and personall emotional problems. Logistic regression analyses revealed that although gender was significantly correlated with help-seeking attitudes, it was only predictive of informal help-seeking for interpersonal problems. Previous counseling experience was positively correlated with formal help-seeking regardless of the types of problems, whereas help-seeking attitudes were positively correlated with informal and formal help-seeking for personallemotional problems.