‘Who you gonna call?’ A qualitative study of psychiatrists accessing mental health services

Abstract

Objective: To identify motivation, capabilities and opportunities that enable psychiatrists and registrars to seek help for mental health problems and to inform design of interventions. Method: Data collected in qualitative semi-structured interviews were analysed using a framework approach with the COM-B model of behaviour as a theoretical frame. Results: Accounts of the eight participants show help-seeking to be a complex process requiring cognitive and emotional capability to recognise a problem or goal, acceptance of vulnerability, and facilitated by access to professional networks. Help-seeking was enabled by openness about mental health problems in workplace culture. Conclusions: Interventions to enable help-seeking should focus on normalising the experience of mental health problems among doctors and challenge the notion that difficulties represent characterological flaws. Greater understanding of the mandatory reporting requirements is also required.