Correlating educational attainment, attitudes towards seeking psychotherapy, and willingness to seek mental health treatment among Iraqi refugees

Background: Because of the highly limited nature of research on Arabs and refugees in general, no previous effort to correlate educational attainment, attitudes towards seeking psychotherapy, and willingness to seek treatment among Iraqi refugees exists. Aims: The purpose of this study was to correlate level of educational attainment, attitudes towards seeking psychotherapy, and willingness to seek mental health treatment among a small, voluntary, convenience sample of Iraqi refugees. Methods: This online study followed a non-experimental, correlational research design for the purpose of collecting descriptive statistics utilizing a survey method. The data was properly categorized along the independent and dependent variables and statistically analyzed using Pearson’s r correlations. Results & Conclusions: Among the surveyed participants, no statistically significant difference could be established in either attitudes towards seeking psychotherapy or willingness to seek treatment based on gender or location. There was an almost negligible, positive association between age and level of educational attainment. As expected in alignment with previous research, level of educational attainment among the Iraqi refugee participants positively correlated with attitudes towards seeking psychotherapy (although not as robustly with willingness to seek treatment), and regardless of age for both variables. Ultimately, more positive attitudes towards seeking psychotherapy were also associated with a higher level of willingness to seek treatment