The paths that people take to find help for physical and mental health problems and illness are known as the pathways to care. These pathways are often complex and include a series of points of contact. An individual's pathway is influenced by a number of factors, such as social connections, income and employment, and history with health care professionals. These factors can act as either barriers or facilitators to seeking care, and they can also influence the type of care that is sought first (Anderson et al., 2014; Birnbaum et al., 2017; Kutcher & Wei, 2012).
The staff in a family doctor's office or general practitioner's office tends to be the main access point for many on their pathway to care.
Some communities and individuals may be more likely to turn to informal sources of alternative care, like clergy and traditional healers, as their first point of contact on their pathway to care. Other forms of alternative care includes traditional and herbal medicine, tai-chi and naturopathic medicine. This may be because it is what clients understand and believe in, or because mainstream mental health services do not reflect their values, expectations and patterns of help-seeking.
As a result of beliefs, misunderstandings of their illness and/or lack of recognition of a problem, some individuals do not seek care until they are in crisis and severely ill. At this point, their first point of contact on their pathway to care could be the police, ambulatory services (EMS), Mobile Crisis Intervention Teams (MCIT) or community crisis services (not provided at all community centres).
Use of social media such as Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter is more recently being used as a resource for finding information during the emergence of symptoms, especially among young people. These points of contact are potentially a good source of information and support for immigrants and refugees as information may be translated in their language or they can converse with people in the language they are most comfortable in. However, information on social media can be inaccurate.