The authors investigated Asian-American underuse of mental health resources as a function of attitudes about the nature of mental health (mental health values) and resource preference for assistance with serious personal problems, with 91 Caucasian-American and 90 Japanese-American undergraduates. Mental Health Values Questionnaire (MHVQ) results revealed that Japanese Americans more strongly related several MHVQ scales to mental health (good interpersonal relations, trustworthiness, and absence of negative personal traits) than did Caucasian Americans. Nevertheless, they were less likely than Caucasian Americans to rank mental health professionals as first choice for assistance with serious interpersonal/emotional problems and more likely to prefer close friends for assistance. Mental health values and attitudes about appropriate help-seeking behavior are discussed in relation to the Asian-American underuse phenomenon. LANCE V SUAN is currently a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of North Dakota, where he received his MA in 1989.

No abstract