Mental health treatment stigma, maladaptive personality trait domains, and treatment‐seeking attitudes and behaviors

Objectives A barrier to seeking mental health care is treatment stigma, a form of stigma associated with seeking/receiving mental health treatment. Prior research has also demonstrated relationships between five‐factor model personality traits and treatment‐seeking attitudes. However, findings in this area are mixed and research has tended not to include assessments of maladaptive personality traits outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders–Fifth Edition Section III: Emerging Measures and Models. The present study sought to examine relationships between maladaptive personality traits, treatment stigma, and treatment‐seeking attitudes and behavior in an adult sample. Methods Participants (N = 500) completed a series of questionnaires assessing current and past mental health treatment‐seeking behaviors, treatment stigma, attitudes toward treatment seeking, and maldaptive personality traits. Results Results revealed all five maladaptive personality traits were positively associated with increased treatment stigma, and in models controlling for the shared variance across maladaptive personality traits, negative affect, antagonism, psychoticism, and stigma exhibited unique associations with one's perceived value and need of mental health treatment, whereas negative affect, detachment, and stigma were uniquely associated with openness to seeking mental health treatment for emotional problems. While the five maladaptive personality traits were associated with a history of treatment‐seeking behaviors at the bivariate level and after controlling for stigma, only negative affect was uniquely associated with treatment‐seeking behaviors in a model including all five personality trait domains. Exploratory moderation analyses revealed associations between stigma and openness to seeking treatment varied as a function of maladaptive personality traits. Conclusions This study extends prior research on the role of personality traits in understanding treatment‐seeking attitudes and behaviors and may have clinical implications for the use of maladaptive personality trait screeners in practice.