Psychological Help-Seeking Stigma and Intention to Seek Professional Psychological Help in the AI Era: The Roles of Counselor Type and Mental Health Literacy
1. Department of Applied Psychology, Shaanxi University of Technology, Hanzhong 723001, China
2. School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710062, China
Abstract：Psychological help-seeking stigma is an important barrier to professional psychological help-seeking. With the development of artificial intelligence, AI-based psychological services may provide alternative counseling contexts. However, whether the association between help-seeking stigma and professional help-seeking intention varies by counselor type remains unclear. This study examined the moderating role of counselor type and the further moderating role of mental health literacy. Two studies were conducted. Study 1 used a 2 × 2 between-subjects scenario experiment manipulating help-seeking information (stigmatizing vs. anti-stigmatizing) and counselor type (human vs. AI). A total of 484 participants provided valid data on professional psychological help-seeking intention. Study 2 used a questionnaire survey with 751 participants. PROCESS Model 3 was applied to examine the three-way interaction among psychological help-seeking stigma, counselor type, and mental health literacy. Study 1 showed that participants in the stigmatizing information condition reported lower help-seeking intention than those in the anti-stigmatizing information condition. A significant interaction emerged: under the stigmatizing information condition, intention to seek help from an AI counselor was higher than that from a human counselor, whereas the opposite pattern was found under the anti-stigmatizing condition. Study 2 revealed a significant three-way interaction. Under the human counselor condition, the negative association between stigma and help-seeking intention strengthened with higher mental health literacy. Under the AI counselor condition, this association was nonsignificant at low literacy levels but became significantly positive at medium and high levels. These findings extend the mental health service-seeking model to AI-based counseling contexts by highlighting the roles of psychological help-seeking stigma, counselor type, and mental health literacy in professional psychological help-seeking intention. The results suggest the importance of continued anti-stigma efforts and mental health literacy education, as well as the need to consider the respective characteristics and limitations of human and AI counseling when providing appropriate psychological support.
陈媛媛，齐梓帆，霍涌泉. 心理求助污名与AI时代专业心理求助意愿：咨询师类型与心理健康素养的作用[J]. 应用心理学, 0, (): 1-.
CHEN Yuanyuan, QI Zifan, HUO Yongquan. Psychological Help-Seeking Stigma and Intention to Seek Professional Psychological Help in the AI Era: The Roles of Counselor Type and Mental Health Literacy. 应用心理学, 0, (): 1-.
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