"When I Lost It, They Dragged Me Out": How Care Encounters Empower Marginalized Young Adults' Mental Health Aspiration and Care-Seeking

Mental health care-seeking among marginalized young adults has received limited attention in CSCW research. Through in-depth interviews and visual elicitation methods with 18 diverse U.S. participants, our study reveals how marginalized identities shape mental health care-seeking journeys, often characterized by low aspirations influenced by lived experiences of marginalization. We introduce the concept of "care encounters"—serendipitous interactions with mental health resources that occur when individuals are not actively seeking support. These encounters serve as critical turning points, catalyzing shifts in aspiration and enabling more proactive care-seeking behaviors. Their transformative impact operates through three mechanisms: tangible assistance, supportive discourse, and social connection building. Our analysis identifies the infrastructural conditions that facilitate these transformative encounters and their effectiveness in connecting marginalized young adults with appropriate mental health resources. This work advances CSCW's understanding of how marginalized identity influences care-seeking behaviors while providing actionable design implications for socio-technical interventions that can better support mental health care access for vulnerable populations.