People are often hesitant to seek professional help for mental health concerns. One barrier is the perception of stigma for seeking help or being labeled with a condition. For example, despite the availability of effective treatment, only about half of veterans who need professional help for combat stress (or PTSD) seek it. Research has demonstrated that perceptions of social support increase mental health help-seeking, and being encouraged to do so is associated with perceptions of social norms favoring decisions to seek help. Two areas of investigation stem from these ideas. Due to the lack of literature examining the types of messages people use to prompt or encourage others, the first reports the frequencies of messages that 201 survey participants reported that they would use if they were to encourage someone to seek mental health help. These messages were coded into the categories of emotional, tangible, informational, esteem, and network support. The most frequent type of support message was informational, making up about 60% of the messages provided. The second study reports the factors that 96 military personnel reported that underlie persuasive messages targeting military service members to encourage others to seek mental health help for combat stress. Among other factors, fear of stigma has been cited in the literature as a barrier for military personnel to seeking mental health help. Stigma is rooted in social norms, as groups stigmatize by expressing disapproval of those who deviate. This research merges the Social Norms Approach with the Theory of Planned Behavior to predict intention to encourage others to seek mental health help and evaluates the Social Norms Approach as a strategy for reducing perceptions of stigma. There was a discrepancy in the perceptions of norms and actual norms among these participants, with 96% of participants approving of encouraging others to seek help, while they perceived that about 70% of others would approve. The only significant predictor of intention to encourage others was subjective norm, and the interaction terms for attitude with societal injunctive norm and attitude with societal descriptive norm. Participants in the second study also rated the likelihood of using support messages for encouraging mental health help-seeking, with the network support message "I'm here for you" being the most highly rated message.
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