Intent to seek counseling among Filipinos: Examining loss of face and gender

Cramer’s model of help-seeking behavior posited that self-concealment, social support, attitudes toward counseling, and problem severity are essential in understanding individuals’ intent to seek counseling. Path analysis results from 359 Filipino university students indicated that the original Cramer’s model did not achieve the requisites of good model fit and that social support was not associated with problem severity. After adding loss of face to Cramer’s model, we found positive associations with self-concealment and intent to seek counseling and a negative association with attitudes toward counseling. Multiple group analysis of the expanded Cramer’s model indicated that, apart from social support and problem severity intercept differences, path coefficients, intercepts, and residual variances were invariant across gender. The previously nonsignificant social support to problem severity path is now significant. The addition of loss of face and accounting for gender differences in