RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MARRIAGE AND THE INTENTION OF WOMEN TO SEEK PROFESSIONAL PSYCHOLOGICAL HELP

Abstract

In order to determine the extent to which perceptions of various aspects of the quality of marriage and marital instability, i.e. the potential for divorce, is related to the intention of women to seek professional psychological help, we were examined 777 wives living in the formal or informal marriage.

The quality of the marital relationship was measured by a Dyadic Adjustment Scale - DAS (Spanier, 1976, 1989), and marital instability was measured by indicators of the potential for divorce (Booth, Johnson, & Edwards, 1983). Intention to seek professional psychological help was measured with the instrument (Šakotić-Kurbalija, 2011), which includes past and present experiences, intention to seek professional psychological help in the future, as well as the reasons why the respondent has or does not intend to seek professional psychological help.

The results of the multiple regression analysis are suggesting that a correlation between the set of predictors and the intention of wives to seek professional psychological help is statistically significant, but the association is very low R=0.23 (F (5.771) = 8.28, p <0.000) while the adjusted R² = 0.045, thus it seems that the intention to seek professional psychological help is much more influenced by another factors.

Based on the qualitative data collected in this study (questions about why women have or do not intend to seek professional psychological help), it is assumed that the attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help, and their prejudices on this issue play important role in forming their intentions and actual seeking of professional psychological assistance.

Since the early and adequate professional psychological support is one of the basic protective factors of mental health, therefore is of great importance to promote the work of professionals and mental health agencies.