ISSN: 2222-6990
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Chinese university students with depressive symptoms seldom use professional psychological services. Grounded in an extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study examined how attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control (PBC), self-stigma and public stigma relate to help-seeking intention and actual professional help-seeking, and whether intention mediates these associations. In a two-phase cross-sectional survey, 2,000 undergraduates at four comprehensive universities in Hefei, China, completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II, and 363 students scoring 14 to 28 completed the Theory of Planned Behavior Psychological Help-Seeking Questionnaire, the Stigma for Seeking Professional Psychological Help scale and an adapted Actual Help-Seeking Questionnaire covering seven formal help sources in the past month. Data were analyzed with independent-samples t-tests, multiple linear regression and bootstrap mediation (PROCESS Model 4, 5,000 resamples) in IBM SPSS Statistics 27. Eighty-five students (23.4%) reported past-month formal help-seeking. Help-seekers reported stronger intention, more favorable attitudes, stronger subjective norms, greater PBC and lower self-stigma and public stigma than non-help-seekers (all p < .001; |d| = 1.07 to 1.43). Attitude (? = .358), subjective norm (? = .262) and PBC (? = .250) predicted intention (R² = .662), whereas neither stigma dimension did. Actual help-seeking was predicted by subjective norm (? = .134) and self-stigma (? = ?.283) (R² = .341). In five separate simple mediation models, intention had significant indirect effects, and all direct effects remained significant, indicating partial statistical mediation. Latent correlations among the TPB constructs and between the two stigma dimensions were high, so construct-specific estimates should be interpreted cautiously. The findings support an extended TPB in which stigma, particularly self-stigma, relates to help-seeking behavior beyond intention. Because all variables were measured at one time point, the mediation results describe statistical associations rather than causal pathways.
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