Är det okej att be om hjälp? : En kvalitativ studie om hur unga vuxna resonerar kring psykisk ohälsa

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study is to examine how young adults reason when it comes to mental illness among their peers and how they look upon seeking support and help for mental illness. This study is based on three focusgroupinterviews with 14 young adults in Sweden. The theoretical framework is labeling theory, which describes deviation as a process in which society forces social problems as a label onto people until they begin to identifies as deviants. Our results show that young adults are openminded when it comes to mental illness among their peers, but they are on the other hand negative towards seeking help for it. The explanation for this seems to be that many young adults have experiences of mental illness and therefor they believe it is a very important subject, although seeking help for it are strongly connected to stigma because of the prejudice that only people with severe psychological diagnoses are the ones that seek help. Most young adults with mental illness do not have psychological diagnoses and therefor associate seeking help with deviation. Other identified reasons for not wanting to seek help are lack of knowledge and bad experiences with former help-seeking.