Minority Group Second-Language (L2) Health Communication Anxiety and Willingness to Use L2 Mental Health Services: Comparing Quebec Francophones and Anglophones

Accessing and utilizing mental health services in a second language can be challenging. Previous research has shown that a second language-specific health communication anxiety (L2 HCA) in the mental health context decreases the willingness to utilize mental health services in a second language (L2) among the Francophone and Anglophone communities in Quebec. We are interested in the way this relationship differs between Francophones and Anglophones in terms of both magnitude and the potential indirect effects that might explain it. We will compare a sample of 117 participants whose first language is English to a sample of 86 participants whose first language is French who completed an online questionnaire. We hypothesized that the relationship between L2 HCA in the mental health context and the willingness to use mental healthcare services will be of similar strength. Furthermore, we hypothesized that both relationships will be explained by a mediation through predictive uncertainty and predicted quality of rapport. We conducted a regression analysis to obtain the B-coefficients for the Anglophone and Francophone groups, and a T-test to compare those coefficients. Although both regression analyses were significant, the T-test was not. However, we found a difference in the indirect effect: the mediation through predictive uncertainty and predicted quality of rapport of the relationship between L2 HCA and the willingness to use L2 mental health services was significant for the Anglophone group, but not the Francophone group. This work has implications for other linguistic minorities living in Quebec, as well as throughout Canada.