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Article Excerpt
This study addresses intentions to seek advice and help among Jewish and Arab youths in Israel. The sample included 805 Jewish, 159 Moslem, 42 Christian, and 43 Druze youths. Two instruments were used: a demographic questionnaire and a questionnaire on help-seeking intentions. Results indicated that members of the ethnic groups preferred using different sources for advice and help. Compared to Moslem and Druze youths, Jewish youths preferred to turn to fathers, siblings, school counselors, and social workers; Compared to Arab youths, Jewish youths expressed less intention to seek assistance from their mothers; and compared to Moslem youths, Jewish youths expressed more intention to apply to relatives, supervisors, and clergy than did Moslem youths. Druze youths were more willing than Jews or Christians to ask for advice and help from school counselors and social workers and more willing to ask help from clergy than were Moslem youths. All four ethnic groups expressed a greater intention to seek help from informal rather than formal sources of assistance. Significant gender differences were also found. The implications of the findings for the development of appropriate services for different ethnic groups are discussed.
Keywords: help-seeking, youth, Israel, ethnic difference, gender difference, Moslem youth, Christian youth
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Although adolescence is not necessarily a problematic period for everyone (Schonert-Reichl & Muller, 1996), it is regarded as an intense period of change in which people need advice and help (Boldero & Fallon, 1995; Nadler, 1990; Simmons, Burgeson, Carlton-Ford, & Blyth, 1987). Adolescents who do not receive any help in dealing with the multiple life changes they encounter are considered to be at risk of making wrong decisions (Simmons et al., 1987). Although help-seeking is a universal human activity, like many endeavors, it exhibits cross-cultural differences (Garland & Zigler, 1994). Most of the studies mentioned below involved European and American populations. The present study focuses on the effect of ethno-cultural differences on help-seeking behavior, and examines the intentions to seek advice and help among Jewish and Arab male and female adolescents in Israel.
Help-Seeking
Help is sought to alleviate distress by using one's informal (e.g., family and friends) and formal (teachers, psychologists, etc.) environmental sources of support (Broadhurst, 2003; Nadler, 1990; Offer & Schonert-Reichl, 1992; Rickwood, 1995).
Seeking help enhance solving the problem but may be perceived as personal weakness and an inability to cope on one's own (Al-Krenawi, Graham, & Kandah, 2000). The "psychological cost" of help seeking, in the form of admission to incompetence and feelings of worthlessness, may threaten the adolescent's self-esteem (Broadhurst, 2003; Nadler, 1986, 1991; Vogel & Wester, 2003).Both admitting to a need or challenge and actually seeking help can be embarrassing; both underscore the social side of help-seeking, which is influenced by culture and youth culture.
Studies have shown that adolescents tend not to seek help when dealing with problems (Boldero & Fallon, 1995) and prefer solving their problems on their own (Ciarrochi, Deane, & Wilson, 2003). This resistance is attributed to self-reliance (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993) or the developing sense of autonomy (Richwood, 1995). It has been found that when adolescents do turn to others for help, they rarely use formal sources of help (Whitaker et al., 1990) and prefer to rely on informal sources of support, such as friends (Boldero & Fallon, 1995; Rickwood, 1995; Rule & Gandy, 1994). Some studies indicated that youths prefer to turn for advice and help first to friends and than to their mothers, while others indicated that the first support system was the family (Ashley & Foshee, 2005; Hunter, Boyle, & Warden, 2004).
Intentions to seek help
Many everyday behaviors are thought to be mainly volitional, that is, people can either exhibit a certain behavior, if they have a positive intention and attitude toward it, or refrain from it if they oppose it (Ajzen, 1988). These intentions remain within the realm of behavioral dispositions until an appropriate occasion emerges, when the intentions are translated into actual behavior. The intention to perform a specific action under certain conditions is considered to be highly predictive of volitional behavior, as demonstrated in a multitude of settings, study populations, and behaviors (Ajzen, 1988; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Intentions to seek advice and help reflect a subjective appreciation of the severity of the problem, one's perceived abilities to solve problem, and the perceived social restrictions that might prohibit seeking help in a state of need. Nonetheless, the actual help-seeking behavior of individuals may differ from their declared intentions to apply for advice and help. Cognitive development has been offered as an alternative explanation for the decision to seek or avoid seeking help (Broadhurst, 2003). Such cost-benefit analysis will prevent youths from seeking help if they believe that the social consequences and loss of control resulting from help-seeking behavior, outweigh the potential contribution.
Factors, such as age, cognitive development, gender, socio-economic status, and culture are related to adolescents' help-seeking intentions and behavior (Broadhurst, 2003). With reference to informal support systems, younger adolescents have been found to turn more to their family members for help, and older adolescents to their friends (Boldero & Fallon, 1995), Although consulting with friends increases during adolescence, the family is still valued and used for consultation (Wintre, Hicks, McVey, & Fox, 1988). The literature indicates that older adolescents are also more likely than younger ones to seek help from professionals (Schonert-Reichl & Muller, 1996).
Females were found to have more positive attitudes toward seeking help than males do (Garland & Zigler, 1994) and report fewer barriers to doing so (Kuhl, Jarkon-Horlic, & Morrissey, 1997). In general, females were found to exhibit more help-seeking behavior than males from all available sources (Boldero & Fallon, 1995; Hunter et al., 2004; Kaukinen, 2004; McCarthy & Holliday, 2004; Schonert-Reichl & Muller, 1996). Although research findings clearly show that females tend to seek help from informal support systems more than males do, the findings about formal support systems are more controversial (Rickwood, 1995; Rule & Gandy, 1994). Some researchers found that females were more likely to identify a need for help, but that no gender differences were manifest in actual help-seeking after an emotional problem was identified or indicated (Saunders, Resnick, Hoberman, & Blum, 1994). Other researchers claim that gender differences in help-seeking vary according to social context and problem type (Boldero & Fallon, 1995). Sex-role stereotyping studies indicate that females exhibit more help-seeking behavior than males do because they are more dependent than males (Garland & Zigler, 1994), and that females view help-seeking as a legitimate behavior whereas males see it as an indication of weakness and inferiority (Fischer, Winer, & Abramowitz, 1983).
Such stereotyping highlights the importance of family and cultural values, norms, and lifestyles in understanding help-seeking attitudes and behavior. Indeed, different ethnic and social groups vary in the degree of stress attributed to a given situation (Seiffbe-Krenke & Shulman, 1990). Moreover, every culture has its own coping attitudes and norms, resulting in different repertoires of adaptive help-seeking behaviors (Kuhl et al., 1997; Seiffbe-Krenke & Shulman, 1990). Cultural and family values also affect children's and adolescents' perceptions about seeking help in general (Garland & Zigler, 1994), about seeking help for mental health problems in particular (Furnhan & Andrew, 1996), as well as the actual likelihood of using formal services (Stanton-Salazar, Chavez, & Tai, 2001). Because adolescents are affected by the cultural context in which they are raised, the cultural differences between the Jewish sector and three Arab sectors (Druze, Christian and Moslem Arabs) in Israel produce a unique setting for research on help-seeking behavior....
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