Abstract

Sexual violence poses a serious threat to emerging adults’ development and mental health, but few seek help for their mental health. Guided by both developmental and socioecological models of service seeking, the purpose of the present study was to identify profiles of mental health help-seeking barriers (attitudinal, instrumental, and stigma-related) and facilitators (self-compassion) among emerging adult sexual violence survivors. A secondary purpose was to determine whether factors at multiple levels of the ecological system, including the university environment, were associated with profile membership. Undergraduate emerging adult survivors of childhood and past-year sexual violence (N = 286, 87.1% female), aged 18-29 (M = 21.83), completed measures of barriers to help-seeking, self-compassion, and socioecological covariates. Results of the latent profile analysis identified four profiles labeled according to how theoretically well-equipped they were to seek help based on observed patterns of barriers and self-compassion: Well-Equipped (36.71%), Under-Equipped (48.60%), Very Well-Equipped (9.44%), and Very Under-Equipped (5.25%). Findings suggest that over half of the sample was under-equipped to seek help, as evidenced by low levels of self-compassion and high levels of barriers. Greater campus cultural congruity was associated with a higher likelihood of membership in the Well-Equipped profile relative to the Under-Equipped profile. Implications for promoting help-seeking in this population are discussed.