An Exploratory Study of Factors Influencing Help-seeking for Suicidal Ideation in a Sample of Malaysian and Canadian University Students

There is a higher prevalence of suicidal behaviour in university students in comparison to their counterparts in the general population. However, help-seeking is low in this population despite the provision of resources available to them. We investigated the factors that influence help-seeking in Malaysian and Canadian university students with regards to suicidal intent via assessments of psychological distress, perceived stress, resilience, social support, coping skills and mental health knowledge. A regression analysis using General Help-Seeking Questionnaire scores as the dependent variable showed that higher scores on adaptive coping (β = 0.164, p ≤ 0.005) and better social support from family (β = 0.311, p ≤ 0.001) predicted higher help-seeking intentions for suicidality in university students whereas higher psychological distress measured via K10 (β = -0.160, p ≤ 0.05) and female gender (β = -0.127, p ≤ 0.05) predicted less likelihood of help-seeking intentions for suicidality. Increasing and engaging the social support network of the aforementioned population may be an important intervention in increasing help-seeking for suicidal ideation.