Stead et al. (2010): I'll Go to Therapy, Eventually
Stead, Shanahan and Neufeld's 2010 study in Personality and Individual Differences examined how procrastination relates to stress and mental health in young adults. Higher procrastination went with higher stress and poorer mental health, and, crucially, with more negative intentions about seeking mental health treatment: procrastinators were more likely to put off getting help. The paper documents a double bind, the habit that contributes to distress also delays its remedy.
| Citation | Stead, R., Shanahan, M. J., & Neufeld, R. W. J. (2010). "I'll go to therapy, eventually": Procrastination, stress and mental health. Personality and Individual Differences, 49(3), 175–180. |
|---|---|
| Study type | Cross-sectional survey |
| Sample | 200 university undergraduates |
| Key finding | Procrastination correlated with higher stress and poorer mental health, and predicted lower intention to seek mental health treatment |
What the study found
Undergraduates completed measures of trait procrastination, perceived stress, mental health and attitudes toward seeking treatment. Procrastination and stress were each associated with poorer mental health, and procrastination and stress were themselves correlated. The distinctive result was about help-seeking: more procrastinatory students reported weaker intentions to seek mental health care, consistent with the paper's title, therapy becomes one more aversive task to defer.
Why it matters
Most procrastination research measures the cost in grades or deadlines. This study points at a quieter cost: avoidance generalises, and the appointments most worth keeping, therapy, the GP, the difficult conversation, are exactly the aversive, no-deadline tasks procrastination targets. It complements Sirois's procrastination-health model, where treatment delay is one of the pathways from delay to worse health. Practically, it argues for treating help-seeking as a procrastination problem: shrink it to one concrete step, booked at a specific time.
Caveats
This is a single cross-sectional survey of 200 students, so the arrows are not established: distress can cause procrastination as easily as the reverse, and a third factor like neuroticism could drive both. Treatment-seeking was measured as attitudes and intentions, not actual appointments attended. The correlations were moderate, this is a reliable pattern, not a deterministic one.
Peer-reviewed study in Personality and Individual Differences. Verified via Crossref.
Related
Sirois on the procrastination-health modelImplementation Intentions, turning intentions into booked steps
Frequently asked questions
Is procrastination linked to depression and anxiety?
They are correlated: studies including this one find procrastinators report more stress and poorer mental health. The relationship runs both ways, distress makes tasks feel heavier, and delay generates guilt and stress, and procrastination is best understood as a self-regulation pattern that interacts with mood rather than a mental illness itself.