The relationships among self-compassion, stigma, and attitudes toward counseling in student-athletes
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
Although factors involved with help-seeking have been widely studied in the general college population, the help-seeking attitudes of college student-athletes have received less attention. One factor that has been consistently associated with help-seeking attitudes in college-athletes is stigma (Bird et al., 2018; Wahto et al., 2016). Specifically, lower levels of stigma are associated with more positive attitudes toward help-seeking in athletes. However, less is known about factors that might moderate the influence of stigma on help-seeking attitudes. Self-compassion, through its emphasis on self-kindness and associations with improved well-being, might be a variable that reduces the influence of stigma (Heath et al., 2018). Therefore, the purposes of this study were to 1) examine the moderating role of self-compassion on the relationship between public and self-stigma, 2) determine if self-stigma is associated with attitudes toward seeking counseling in college student-athletes, a nd 3) investigate the above mentioned differences between males and females. A sample of 243 student-athletes from NCAA Divisions I and III participated in the study. Using structural equation modeling, self-compassion did not moderate the relationship between public and self-stigma. However, public stigma was positively associated with self-stigma, and self-stigma was negatively associated with attitudes toward counseling. A multigroup analysis did not find differences between males and females for the model, although there was a trend toward significance for males. The results of this study have implications for professionals who work with college student-athletes and findings suggest that efforts should aim to reduce stigma and examine alternative factors that might improve attitudes toward mental health help-seeking.
