Resilience and stigma influence older African Americans seeking care.

Background: Stigma affects older adults' willingness to describe depressive symptoms to health care personnel and others. Specific aims targeted associations among depressive symptoms, resilience, stigma and willingness, predictors of willingness, and estimated causal effects.

Methods: A cross-sectional, correlational design was used; 158 participants from community agencies and churches participated. Multivariate analyses of variance and multiple regression data analyses were used. Principal components analysis was conducted to determine patterns among the items within specified scales.

Results: Internal consistency reliability for each scale was 0.84 or above. Significant correlations between depressive symptoms and stigma (p < 0.05), between resilience and willingness (p < 0.0001), and single items were examined. Influences on willingness to seek mental health care for depressive symptoms unrelated to depressive symptom scores were revealed.

Conclusions: Resilience influenced older African American's willingness to seek care for depressive symptoms. Exploration of early interventions to reduce depressive symptom escalation in older adults is warranted.