Asian American Mental Health

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According to Kramer (2002), Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial group in the United States; growing from fewer than 1 million in 1960 to 7.2 million in 1990. But despite this ongoing rapid progression, Asian Americans have the lowest rate of utilization of any professional mental health related services than the general United States population (Tung 2011). To increase the utilization of mental health services among the Asian American community, the most hindering barriers that exist preventing Asian Americans in general from seeking out these services must be identified and explored. In spite of the fact that Asian Americans are viewed as the “model minority”, with high academic achievements and few mental/behavioral problems, studies …show more content…

Because of these high rates of suicide and such low utilization of mental health services among Asian American families, it is important to determine the most obstructing underlying reasons or barriers of this underutilization to better assist and provide services to the Asian American community as well as attempt to minimize these barriers. To identify such hindering barriers that lead to the underutilization of mental health services, three empirical articles regarding this concept, most importantly their findings, will be analyzed. The most recent study pertaining to the topic of underutilization of mental health services was publish in 2015 by Meekyung Han and Helen Pong in the Journal of College Student Development. This study aimed to assess whether well-developed cultural contributing factors (stigma, acculturation, and preference for racially/ethnically concordant counselors) among Asian American four-year college students might also predict help seeking behaviors for mental health issues among Asian American community college …show more content…

Therefore, the overall purpose for the study at hand is to identify the factors that either promote or obstruct help seeking behaviors to assist underserved Asian American community college students to succeed in higher education and become productive citizens. The method used in this study was a quantitative cross-sectional survey research design method via a self-administered, paper and pencil survey

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