Abstract
Attitudes toward mental health problems and seeking professional help were compared across a sample of English,.Spanish and Punjabi people (n=148), in a non-clinical population m London and Birmingham. The three groups were matched for level of education and for not being mental health service users. Each respondent was invited to complete a questionnaire (written in the first language of each group), which comprised of two sections. The first section was a semi-structured survey on knowledge, understanding and attitudes toward mental health problems. The second section was Fischer and Turner’s (1970) Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale (ATSPPHS). Factor Analysis of the original scale revealed only one reliable factor, which was "Willingness to seek professional help", across the whole population and each group. The results showed that the Punjabis were less willing to seek professional help than the English and Spanish: Although all three groups were equally willing to see a G.P. Content Analysis on the qualitative data revealed that: the English group were most familiar with professional terms and labels; that all three groups thought more about the experience of mental health problems than the cause; and that the Punjabis were the only group to report religious and/or supernatural phenomena as aetiology for the onset of mental health problems. Implications for these findings are that by targeting people of lower socioeconomic status, a ‘hidden’ clinical population may have been identified, especially, in the Punjabi group. If the sample population is, however, willing to see a primary care professional, this finding perhaps suggests the need for further information about specialist services, via primary care in order to facilitate and enhance service delivery at secondary and tertiary levels.