TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 4-FULL ISSUE

384 The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 4 2013). Rural residents often depend on alternative sources such as faith-based organizations to address mental health concerns (Bryant, Moore, Willis, & Hadden, 2015) or ignore the prevalence of mental health symptomology altogether (Snell-Rood et al., 2017). Unfortunately, researchers indicated that rural residents seek treatment for mental health disorders after they have become progressively worse, resulting in more extensive treatment, which is often unavailable or costly for rural clients (Gore, Sheppard, Waters, Jackson, & Brubaker, 2016; Hastings & Cohn, 2013; Snell-Rood et al., 2017). Deen and Bridges (2011) suggested these delays in seeking mental health treatment are associated with low MHL. Treatment availability for mental health care in rural areas is fragmented because of critical shortages in mental health care providers in these communities (El-Amin, Anderson, Leider, Satorius, & Knudson, 2018; Snell-Rood et al., 2017). Practitioner shortage is attributed to difficulty in recruiting and retaining professionals for rural practice as well as practitioners’ limited understanding of cultural norms and effective interventions to address mental health needs in rural communities (Fifield & Oliver, 2016; Hastings & Cohn, 2013). Among practitioners who provide clinical services in rural areas, many report feeling incompetent to work with the population because of receiving fewer training opportunities to learn how to work with rural populations, less access to consultation resources, and professional isolation (Hastings & Cohn, 2013; Jameson & Blank, 2007). Fifield and Oliver (2016) found the most common need of rural-area mental health professionals was training opportunities specific to rural mental health counseling. Pointedly, rural mental health service providers are encouraged to tailor interventions and informational material to meet the needs of the specific communities in which they practice (Crumb, Haskins, & Brown, 2019; El-Amin et al., 2018). For example, a qualitative study examining the experience of rural mental health counselors found it was necessary for rural counselors to modify their interventions to include community-based interventions and expand their roles to include consulting, advocacy, and case management to effectively meet the needs of rural clientele (Crumb, Mingo, & Crowe, 2019). In 2012, rural-specific supplemental materials and curricula were integrated into the standard Mental Health First Aid program, a training course disseminated by the National Council for Behavioral Health to address gaps in MHL by teaching skills to help individuals identify, understand, and respond to mental illness (El-Amin et al., 2018; National Council for Behavioral Health, 2019). Based upon extant research evidence, cultural distinctions in rural living impact MHL and, subsequently, the quality of mental health care in rural regions of the United States. Despite the above-mentioned disparities, there are opportunities for improving the mental health care of those in underserved rural areas. By becoming familiar with how rural residents in the United States define mental health and investigating the sociodemographic idiosyncrasies in the meaning of mental health for rural residents in specific regions of the United States, mental health practitioners can understand how to better address needs, counter structural barriers to treatment, and improve overall mental health care in rural areas. As far as we are aware, there are no studies that have examined how those in rural communities define and conceptualize mental health. Thus, the current study was designed to fill this gap in the literature. This study sought to understand how individuals in the rural Southeast define and conceptualize mental health in order to explore MHL and serve as a guidepost to providing culturally relevant services to residents in these regions. Areas in the Southern United States have a high concentration of rural residents who potentially have less access to mental health services, which may influence their overall MHL (El-Amin et al., 2018). Furthermore, we know little about how rural populations define mental health and the knowledge and beliefs that undergird their understanding of mental health. Rather, we have definitions of mental health that are taken from large national and international entities (e.g., U.S.