Children’s Mental Health Distress and Barriers to Help-Seeking: Insights from the Tinkle Friend Chatline

Tinkle Friend is the national chatline providing support, advice, and information to primary school children in Singapore. Most chatline research has focused on examining service statistics and clients’ experiences with using the service. However, the contents of chats are a valuable resource in understanding children’s perspectives. The study aimed to explore what contributed to children’s mental health distress and their experiences related to help-seeking from people around them. Fifty-seven (approximately 20%) mental health-related chats logged between March and December 2021 were randomly selected and analysed using thematic analysis. Chats shorter than 15 minutes in duration were excluded. Children in the study were aged 8 to 13 years (M=11.5 years). Two themes were identified: sources of distress and barriers to help-seeking. Children’s distress mainly stemmed from harsh parenting and children experiencing collateral damage from parental conflict within the family, academic and behavioural expectations in school, and bullying and pursuing peer social acceptance. In response to distress, children were reluctant to seek help due to distrust, fear of rejection and stigma, parental invalidation, and perceiving adults and peers as unreliable sources of support. Study findings suggest that adults have a key responsibility to create safe spaces due to their extensive influence on children. Recommendations include to enhance adults’ mental health literacy to combat their invalidating responses, empower and enable children in their help-seeking processes, and improve children’s sense of safety around their social network. Study findings also affirm the importance of maintaining child chatlines as an external avenue of support for children.