Limitations
depression, psychiatric
ATTRITION
Our analyses are based exclusively on self-reported data. New instruments yet lacking full psychometric validation were used for continuum beliefs, causal beliefs, self-efficacy measures and treatment experience. However, the new questionnaires are based on existing validated items and therefore should still be interpretable, yet not fully comparable to other studies and thus need validation. We opted for a broad operationalisation of help-seeking including general practitioners, counselling centres, or neurologists, additional to psychotherapeutic or psychiatric professionals. We aimed to reflect help-seeking with high external validity since, for example, nearly three of four people with depression are treated by general practitioners [Additionally, limitations to the representativeness of the sample are raised. On the one hand, we investigated a sample in Germany, limiting generalisability to other countries, partly due to differences regarding healthcare accessibility and statutory health insurance. Moreover, we limited our analyses to intrapersonal processes and their influencing factors. It would be important to replicate our analyses with focus on structural barriers, including factors of perceived and actual costs, availability and accessibility (e.g., transportation, hours of work, childcare requirements). Furthermore, even though we controlled for the influence of age, gender, and depression severity, there might be an influence of the socioeconomic status [The study is likely to contain a self-selection bias, as only motivated people with computer skills and access to the online panel might have been interested and able to participate. This longitudinal study assessed help-seeking behaviour over a period of up to three to six months with a drop-out from baseline to follow-ups. Attrition analyses have shown that those who drop out systematically differ from the rest of the sample in certain characteristics, further limiting representativeness. Additionally, this attrition is an indication of variables to address in further research, such as household size. So far, we limited our analyses to direct influences of the intermediary variables to provide insight on the influences of direct processes not considering combined influences nor possible reciprocal interactions between the intermediary variables. Correlational analyses revealed that they are partly negatively associated, suggesting that further analyses on the most effective combinations are needed, e.g., for drawing in-depth practical implications for creating help-seeking interventions with combined psychoeducational content.