Abstract:
The study examined the influence of self disclosure, perceived stigma and social support on students’ attitude and intentions to seek counselling. Four hundred and ninety nine (266 male and 233 female) undergraduates of University of Nigeria, Nsukka, aged 18 to 28years (mean age= 23.90, SD= 2.70), participated in the study. Attitude was measured using Attitude Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale while Intentions was measured using Intentions of Seeking Counselling Inventory. Self Disclosure, Perceived Stigma and Social Support were measured using Jourard’s Self Disclosure Questionnaire, Social Stigma for Receiving Psychological Help Scale and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support respectively. Multivariate analysis of variance showed that self disclosure did not significantly influence students’ attitude toward seeking counselling. Perceived Stigma significantly influenced students’ attitude toward seeking counselling, F (1,498) =15.80, p<.001. Social support did not influence students’ attitude toward seeking counselling. Self disclosure was found to have significantly influenced students’ intentions to seek counselling, F (1,498) =14.98, p<.001. Further, perceived stigma significantly influenced students’ intentions to seek counselling, F (1,498) =14.73, p<.001. However, social support did not significantly influence their intentions to seek counselling. There was a significant interaction effect between self disclosure and perceived stigma on attitude toward seeking counselling, F (1,498) =4.94, p<.05; Self disclosure also interacted with social support on attitudes, F (1,498) =4.50, p<.05. There was equally a significant three-way interaction among self disclosure, perceived stigma and social support on attitude towards seeking counselling only, F (1,498) =14.89, p<.001. Lastly, there was a significant interaction between self disclosure and social support on students’ intentions to seek counselling, F (1,498) =3.94, p<.05.The implications of findings were discussed, limitations outlined and recommendation for future studies made.
