Mental health values and preference for mental health resources of Japanese-American and Caucasian-American students.

Abstract

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.

An introduction to association rule mining: An application in counseling and help-seeking behavior of adolescents

“…This preference for informal helping agents also extends to Chinese students (Cheung, 1984). In addition, Asian families in the United States have been found to underutilize mental health services and to overutilize informal sources of support, in comparison with other ethnic groups (Suan & Tyler, 1990). There is limited published research on adolescent help-seeking behavior in Asia.…”

Cultural and practical barriers to seeking mental health treatment for Chinese Americans

“…Whether or not mental health treatment is sought depends on individuals' perception of its helpfulness as well as one's conception of the nature of emotional problems. Among many Asians, emotional distress is seen as the result of malingering bad thoughts, a lack of will power, and personality weakness~Kitano, 1969; Narikiyo & Kameoka, 1992;Suan & Tyler, 1990;Sue & Morishima, 1982! ; thus self control and solving one's own problems are culturally valued over seeking help~Boey, 1999;Loo et al, 1989;Zhang, Snowden & Sue, 1998!.…”

Relationships between adolescents’ preferred sources of help and emotional distress, ambivalence over emotional expression, and causal attribution of symptoms: a Singapore study

“…Since causal attribution (Baumann, 2003;Kirmayer et al, 1994) and sources of help (Kirmayer, 2004: Kleinman, 1980 are better understood in a sociocultural context, it is relevant to discuss their relationship based on Asian studies here. Past research has shown that Asians, even though suffering from a wide range of emotional distress, are less likely than Westerners (predominantly white North Americans) to utilise mental health services (Huang & Spurgeon, 2006;Leong & Lau, 2001;Suan & Tyler, 1990). This phenomenon may be due to stigmatisation of mental disorders, somatisation, shame and 'face saving', linguistic barriers, inadequate number of culturally competent mental health professionals, inaccessibility of services, value conflicts with service providers, not being familiar with the Western mode of mental health services, and negative attitudes towards seeking psychological help (Chen, Sullivan, Lu, & Shibusawa, 2003;Leong & Lau, 2001;Spencer & Chen, 2004;Sue & Sue, 2008;Yeh, 2002).…”