Barriers and Facilitators to Mental Health Help-seeking among Older Adults: A Systematic Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Older adults are very unlikely to seek mental health help. There are multiple factors that contribute to a person’s final decision to seek formal help. The aim of this study is to systematically review and summarize quantitative literature on the barriers and facilitators that influence older adult’s mental health help-seeking behaviors. Methods : Four databases including PubMed-Medline, EMBASE, ProQuest central, and Scopus were searched to identify barriers and/or facilitators to mental health help-seeking behaviors. Studies were included if they satisfied the following criteria: Articles that were quantitative studies published during the period between 2015-2021, that address barriers and/or facilitators to mental health help seeking among older adults aged 65 years old or older and examining depression, anxiety, and psychological distress disorders. Help-seeking was defined as receiving a consultation from health professionals such as a general practitioner, clinical psychologist, councilor, or social worker. Study quality and risk of bias was assessed using The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS). Results: Five cross-sectional studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. These studies were from Australia, United States, and Malaysia, and were carried out during the period 2015-2021. Two studies examined both facilitators and barriers while three studies examined barriers only. Neither of the studies examined facilitators only. The prevalence of seeking mental health help among elderly people ranged between 77% to 82%. Cost, stigma, and beliefs of the effectiveness of mental health counseling, were the most reported key barriers. Main reported facilitators included prior positive experience with mental health services, high level of education, and a high-income level. Conclusion: The findings reported in this systematic review can be used in future research and practical implications to assess the barriers and facilitators among older adults.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.050 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".