Role of stigma and attitudes toward help-seeking from a general practitioner for mental health problems in a rural town Sarah Wrigley, Henry Jackson, Fiona Judd, Angela Komiti Objective: To examine the role of perceived stigma and attitudes to seeking care in predicting help-seeking from a general practitioner (GP) for mental health problems. Method: A cross-sectional survey in 2002 with self-report questionnaires assessing cur- rent levels of symptomatology, disability, attitudes towards mental illness, knowledge of prevalence and causes of mental illness, contact with mental illness and help-seeking behaviour and preferences and attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help. Results: No significant relationship was found between symptom measures and mea- sures of disability and help-seeking. Variables positively associated with general attitudes to seeking professional psychological help were: lower perceived stigma, and biological rather than person-based causal attributions for schizophrenia. Willingness to discuss mental health issues with a GP was predicted by the perceived helpfulness of the GP and by no other variable. Conclusions: Causal attributions and perceived stigma rather than participants’ levels of symptomatology and disability influence attitudes to help-seeking for mental health issues. Efforts to improve attitudes to help-seeking should focus on reducing stigma and improving mental health literacy regarding the causes of disorders. Key words: attitudes to help-seeking, general practitioner, mental health literacy, mental illness, stigma. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 2005; 39:514–521 The National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (NSMHWB) found that 18% of Australian adults met the criteria for at least one mental disorder and 29% of these individuals were identified as experiencing moder- Sarah Wrigley, Clinical Psychologist North Western Aged Person’s Mental Health Program, Sunshine Hospital, Melbourne, Australia Henry Jackson, Professor of Psychology (Correspondence) Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia Fiona Judd, Professor of Rural Mental Health; Angela Komiti, Research Assistant Centre for Rural Mental Health, Monash University School of Psychia- try, Psychology and Psychological Medicine, and Bendigo Health Care Group, Bendigo, Australia Received 23 January 2004; revised 10 January 2005; accepted 14 January 2005. ate or severe disability [1]. However, only around 40% of people who met the criteria for a mental disorder had sought professional help for a mental health concern in the previous 12 months [2]. Parslow and Jorm [3] con- ducted a series of analyses on these data in order to iden- tify the sociodemographic and ‘need’ variables associated with the use of various health providers for mental health problems, finding that irrespective of the health provider selected, Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI)-diagnosed depression and anxiety, sex and being separated were generally associated with help-seeking. Other studies have consistently found sex to be one of the strongest predictors of attitudes toward help-seeking for mental health issues [4–6] with women seeking help more frequently than men [7–10]. Other important components which may influence help-seeking include perceived helpfulness of service