Religious coping, psychological distress, and attitudes toward seeking psychological help among African Americans

The existing literature on mental health service utilization by African Americans suggests that African Americans underutilize professional psychological services and may employ alternative methods of coping, including religious coping. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between religious coping style, psychological distress, and attitude toward help-seeking among African Americans. Results of the study indicated that education and history of counseling are related to attitudes toward help-seeking. A correlation was found between indifference to stigma and psychological distress with high levels of indifference to stigma associated with lower levels of psychological distress. Religious coping style was not found to moderate the relationship between psychological distress and help-seeking attitude. The findings of this study have important implications for conducting interventions to increase service utilization among African Americans and for the direction of future research.