Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT University students frequently report self-reliance as a reason for not seeking mental health treatment, a tendency often interpreted as treatment avoidance. However, emerging scholarship suggests that self-management is not solely a personal choice but is enacted within wider social and structural forces. Existing discussions critically considering self-management have hitherto focused on physical health conditions; thus, we fill a gap by comprehensively investigating self-management in mental health contexts. Drawing on interviews with 261 college students across ten countries in the WMH-ICS qualitative study, we analyze how students manage mental health difficulties within individual, interpersonal, institutional, and societal contexts. Guided by the Social Ecological Model, we identify typologies of self-management practices, reasons for self-management, and present a case study illustrating their intersection. Our findings demonstrate that self-management is not merely an individual preference, but a distributed configuration of care shaped by relationships, campus environments, and broader societal pressures. We contribute to interdisciplinary debates that reframe self-management not as a failure of help-seeking, but as a critical site for understanding how care is negotiated in everyday life.
Source: SSM - Mental Health
Authors: Loa Gordon, James Gillett, Kylie Li, Osiris Rankin, Franchesca Castro-Ramirez, Claes Andersson, Corina Benjet, Edna Bosire, Alicja Bukowska, Ewelina Cichon, Oana A. David, Dong Dong, Oliver Eksteins, Ghadir Fakhri Al-Jayyousi, Katie Gebbia, Penelope Hasking, Kristin Hudec, Linda Norah Khakali, Andrzej Kiejna, Alvaro Langer, Denisa M. Mălan, Daniel Marsh, Vania Martínez, Maria Montague, Isabel Mooney, Tiana Mori, Mauricio J. Núñez-Delgado, Charlene Rapsey, Annelieke M. Roest, Marta Silva, Karla Suárez, Naira Topooco, Daniel V. Vigo, Angel Wang, Ronald Kessler, Matthew Nock, John Naslund
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,540
Award: G1805646547
OpenAlex ID: W7224432928