Abstract
Despite an increasingly high prevalence of mental health conditions among both adolescents and parents, many delay or avoid seeking help. We study how social norms influence parental mental health help-seeking decisions. While existing research on norms has primarily focused on individuals’ own choices, little is known about how norms influence decisions for others. Using an online vignette experiment, we evaluate the effect of supportive and unsupportive norm information on parents’ mental health help-seeking across two roles: the parent as self and the parent as caregiver. Our conceptual framework suggests that unsupportive norms may affect parent’s decisions differently when they seek help for their children than for themselves, whereas supportive norms yield similar effects across roles. The study underscores the need for stigma reduction efforts that recognize the complex social context in which parents make caregiving decisions, and sheds light on how the same norm can lead the same decision-maker to make different choices depending on their role – potentially leading to parental choices that are misaligned with individual and family wellbeing.