Abstract

The first-line intervention for common mental disorders (depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress) is evidence-based psychotherapy. Despite its preference among the general population in Korea, the need for service has been not met due to a lack of organizational and systematic support in the community. The study aims to identify the psychotherapy utilization rate and explore various factors influencing utilization and help-seeking attitudes among Seoul citizens with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress symptoms. The results showed that the psychotherapy utilization rate was 16.3%, and age, income, living alone, vulnerability, mental disorders, and positive help-seeking attitude significantly affected psychotherapy utilization in binominal logistic regression analysis. In addition, multiple regression analysis showed that gender, income, and occupation were the factors that significantly influenced positive help-seeking attitude. The results indicate that despite the high density of mental health services in the city, most Seoul citizens with common mental disorders were not able to access psychotherapy, and various aspects of demographic, socioeconomic, and psychological factors act as barriers to psychotherapy utilization. Based on these findings, we discussed ways to complement and promote public psychotherapy delivery systems and psychotherapy regulation, to close the gap in access to psychotherapy with expertise.