TPC Journal V8, Issue 4- FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 8, Issue 4 309 tablet or smart phone. We recommend that counseling practitioners reach out to local primary care physicians to discuss the utility of integrated behavioral health and make themselves available to physicians for consultation on how to recognize and refer patients to counseling. Mobile Health (mHealth) mHealth refers to the delivery of interventions geared toward promoting physical or mental health by means of a cellular phone (Johnson & Kalkbrenner, 2017). Professional counselors can use mHealth to provide prospective clients with a brief overview of counseling, address prominent barriers to counseling faced by students, and provide mental health resources that are available to students. mHealth might be particularly useful for college and school counselors as academic institutions typically have access to students’ cell phone numbers, and students “appear to be open and responsive to the utilization of mHealth” (Johnson & Kalkbrenner, 2017, p. 323). The campus counseling center is underutilized on some college campuses because of stigma (Rosenthal &Wilson, 2016) and students’ unawareness of the services that are available at the counseling center (Dobmeier, Kalkbrenner, Hill, & Hernández, 2013). College counselors might consider using mHealth as a platform for both reducing stigma toward counselor-seeking behavior and for spreading students’ awareness of the services that are available to them for reduced or no fees at the counseling center. Reducing Stigma Toward Seeking Counseling Our results are consistent with the body of evidence indicating that when compared to women, men are less likely to attend counseling, more susceptible to barriers to attending counseling, and more likely to terminate counseling early (Levant et al., 2011; Seidler et al., 2017). Consistent with Vogel et al. (2011), we found that stigma was a predominant barrier to counseling among male participants. It is recommended that counseling practitioners focus on normalizing common presenting concerns that men are facing and find venues (e.g., barber shops, sports arenas) where they can reach out to men and lessen their concerns about attending counseling (Neukrug, Britton, & Crews, 2013). Professional counselors can become leaders in reducing stigma toward help-seeking among men by normalizing common presenting concerns. As one example, the stress, anxiety, and depression men face when given a diagnosis of prostate cancer can potentially be reduced by counselors and their professional associations. By developing ways for the public to understand prostate cancer and its related mental health concerns, counselors and their professional associations can lessen the stigma of the disease. Promoting public awareness also can increase men’s likelihood of talking about a diagnosis of prostate cancer with friends, loved ones, and counselors, in a similar way that a diagnosis of breast cancer has been destigmatized over the past few decades. Professional counselors should consider other strategies that can be utilized to enhance the likelihood for men to attend counseling, such as group counseling or an informal setting. Limitations and Future Research Because causal attributions cannot be inferred from a cross-sectional survey research design, future researchers can extend the line of research on the FSV barriers using an experimental design by administering the scale to clients prior to and following attendance in counseling. Results might provide evidence of how counseling lessens one’s sensitivity to some barriers. Consistent with the U.S. Census Bureau (2017), the ethnic identity of the majority of participants in our sample was White. Thus, future research should replicate the present study using a more ethnically diverse sample, especially because individuals who identify with ethnicities other than White tend to seek counseling at lower rates (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2008; Vogel et al., 2011). In addition, despite having