Barriers to help-seeking for deliberate self-harm: construction and validation of a questionnaire for Portuguese adolescents and young adults

Objective Deliberate self-harm (DSH) is a prevalent and significant public health concern. However, help-seeking remains notably low, and there is no previously published work providing a validated measurement to address the barriers to help-seeking for DSH. This study developed and validated the Questionnaire of Barriers to Help-seeking for Deliberate Self-harm (QBH-DSH), an instrument designed to measure perceived barriers to help-seeking among adolescents and young adults with a lifetime history of DSH. Methods The QBH-DSH was developed by adapting items from the Barriers to Help-seeking Scale (BHSS, Mansfield et al., 2005) and incorporating insights from interviews with a clinical sample of adolescents with a history of these behaviors and from Portuguese research on this topic. Results An initial 29-item version of the questionnaire was reduced to a 20-item scale with a four-factor structure through an exploratory and a confirmatory factor analysis. Conclusions The scale demonstrated good model fit and reliability, providing a foundation for targeted prevention and intervention strategies focused on promoting help-seeking.