The relationship between religiosity and stigma and attitudes to seeking psychological help

Attitude towards seeking psychological help is considered as one of the factors that predict professional help seeking behavior. Experts strive to identify variables associated with attitude and remove barriers to seeking professional help. There are research findings showing that individuals tend to explain the causes of psychological disorders with religious attributions, and in relation to this, they prefer the ways they think are religious instead of turning to professional help for treatment. In this study, it is aimed to examine the relationship between religiosity, stigmatizing psychological disorders for moral/religious reasons, and the attitude of seeking psychological help. For this purpose, Attitudes Towards Seeking Psychological Help Scale-Short Form, Moral/Religious Reasons Sub-Dimension of Stigma Scale and Religiosity Scale were used. In addition, questions were added to the questionnaires about the demographic characteristics of the participants, their perception of psychological health, their experience of receiving psychological help, their preference for help against a psychological problem, their preference for getting help from a religious official and a reader teacher, and the preferences of the therapist regarding religiosity. The questionnaires were applied through Google Forms in December and January 2020. The sample of the study consists of 352 (244 female, 108 male) participants aged between 18 and 73. The findings obtained from the participants were analyzed using t-test, ANOVA, Pearson Correlation and regression analysis. According to the findings obtained, differences reaching the level of significance were determined between the attitudes of seeking psychological help, religiosity and stigmatization for moral/religious reasons. According to the results of the research, no significant relationship was found between the attitude of seeking psychological help and religiosity. However, a negative significant relationship was found between the attitude of seeking psychological help and stigmatization for moral/religious reasons. Religiosity and stigmatization for moral/religious reasons have a positive and significant relationship. In addition, it was determined that the stigmatization variable for moral/religious reasons was a significant predictor of the attitude towards seeking psychological help.