Influence of Faculty Messages on Engineering Student Mental Health Help Seeking

Engineering students have been shown to be less likely to seek help for a mental health concern when compared to non-engineering students due to factors such as the perceived stigma from family, friends, peers, and faculty. Additionally, engineering students often do not consider their mental health concerns severe enough to warrant help seeking. Literature on engineering help seeking behavior supports the idea that engineering students are hesitant to ask for help despite having knowledge of the resources available to students. As a result, a larger study was conducted on engineering mental health help-seeking behavior. Through secondary analysis of the data from that study, this work aims to determine how positive and negative messages from engineering faculty influence engineering undergraduate students’ decision to seek help from a mental health professional. The current study focused on student responses to one main research question: what messages about mental health and help-seeking have you received during your engineering training? Verbal and non-verbal messages specifically from faculty were considered, including encouraging, supporting, stigmatizing, informing, and taboo messages. The findings show that typically faculty members support students’ decision to seek help when needed, but mental health and help seeking resources are usually not explicitly talked about in the classroom or other academic settings. However, negative messages from faculty members deter students from seeking help despite support from others. The results of the current study will be helpful in improving the language used with engineering students to break down barriers surrounding mental health and encourage help seeking.