Measurement of men’s help seeking: Development and evaluation of the Barriers to Help Seeking Scale

This article describes the development and psychometric evaluation of the Barriers to Help Seeking Scale (BHSS). The measure was designed to assess reasons men identify for not seeking professional help for mental and physical health problems. Exploratory factor analyses in a sample of 537 undergraduate men revealed a 5-factor solution of internally consistent subscales, including Need for Control and Self-Reliance, Mini-mizing Problem and Resignation, Concrete Barriers and Distrust of Caregivers, Pri-vacy, and Emotional Control. A separate study of 58 undergraduate men confirmed the reliability of the scale and provided evidence of convergent and criterion validity between the BHSS and measures of masculine gender-role conflict and attitudes toward seeking professional help. Research has documented that men seek help less often than women for a variety of problems in living, including cocaine use, alcohol use, psychiatric illness, and physical problem