A common challenge facing public health practitioners and communication scholars is how to best change perceptions and increase favorable attitudes and awareness of health recommendations, such as help-seeking about depression. Given the need to identify persuasive ways to communicate depression, this study examined how discrete emotions, cognition, and engaging eHealth information-seeking behavior affected US adults' intentions regarding help-seeking about depression. The results from an online survey of 1422 US adults revealed (1) elated emotion and loving emotion; (2) depression consciousness; (3) attitude toward seeking help from mental health services; and (4) eHealth information-seeking significantly predicted intention to seek help from professionals. In addition, depression consciousness, attitude toward seeking help from mental health services, and eHealth information-seeking acted as sequential mediators for the relationship between elated emotion, loving emotion, and behavioral intention. Implications for health communication and depression communication research and practice are discussed.
This study identified psychological profiles based on depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, positive affect, and posttraumatic growth in 298 patients receiving maintenance dialysis, and examined their relationships with self-management at baseline and 1-year follow-up. Five psychological response profiles were identified: well-being (42.95%), resilient (26.17%), moderate-distress-with-growth (17.79%), distressed (11.07%), and high-distress-with-growth (2.01%). Patients were more likely to be in the distressed profile if they were younger, had less social support, received peritoneal dialysis, and suffered from a greater symptom burden of kidney disease. The well-being profile showed better self-management behavior at baseline and 1-year follow-up. The distressed profile was associated with worse self-management at baseline and the resilient profile was associated with worse self-management at follow-up. The findings highlighted the beneficial role of positive psychological constructs in promoting self-management behavior, which implied that beyond eliminating psychological distress, it is important to facilitate positive psychological well-being.