. Armenians are patriarchal in nature, and typically have the man of the household serve as the breadwinner. Mothers are usually seen as caring and nurturing, while fathers are typically viewed more as authoritative and disciplinarian (Bakalian, 1993). While men are seen as the breadwinners and are usually the sole decision makers, women are traditionally expected to be wives and mothers, and are responsible for maintaining and transmitting family traditions (Minnassian, 2010). Armenians are generally considered a collectivistic culture, with strong family values at their cornerstone. Due to a longstanding history of oppression, as a collective, Armenians tend to be weary of others and are usually suspicious when seeking services. As an extension …show more content…
of the aforementioned qualities inherent to the Armenian existence, children are encouraged to uphold their strong ties to their cultural and family values and are expected to transmit the traditions that stretch back many centuries. Armenian acculturation and assimilation. Since Armenians have a long-standing history of wars and relocations, they have become quite adept at establishing flourishing diasporas. Historically, Armenians have been able to quickly learn the new culture, including the language, customs and norms to be able to fit in (Garavanian, 2000). Simultaneously, albeit their ability to try and mold with the prominent culture, they are resistant to assimilation and maintain strong ties to their ethnic identity, their religion, and establish their own schools, community centers and churches (Garavanian, 2000). Although religion and church are a significant part of the Armenian community, Bakalian’s survey in 1993 indicated that many Armenians in New York had decreased levels of attendance to church. A majority of participants attend church specifically for special holidays and occasions. Many Armenians attribute consistent church attendance to feeling more alienated from their dominant culture. In fact, Bakalian (1993) notes that church attendance seems to be decreasing with each new generation in the U.S. As such, it seems that the more assimilated Armenians are to the western culture, the less they attend church (Minnasian, 2010). The Armenians currently living in the U.S.
have ties that bring them close together, and some relationships that set them apart. For example, all Armenians, regardless of their age, feel the need to protect their culture and marry within their culture in order to prevent extinction (Garavanian, 2000). Therefore, they feel strongly about making their own community with their own churches, schools, markets and entertainment centers. On the other hand, some Armenians have forces pulling them apart, due to the different groups within the culture for various political reasons. Furthermore, youth and adolescents born in America feel “out of touch” (Garavanian, p.42, 2000) with their elders, and as such, push away their thoughts and strong feelings. Armenian youth and children, similar to Jewish children, have been found to be “unusually respectful and less rebellious towards their parents” (Garavanian, 2000, p. 42). As previously mentioned, education is a strong value maintained in Armenian families, especially immigrant families (Garavanian, …show more content…
2000). According to Berry (2007), acculturation is the process of a minority group assuming the customs and values of the dominant group that surrounds them; however, this process does not have to be complete and absolute. It is well known that the process of acculturation includes clinging to certain customs and beliefs, while adopting certain others, and that this process progresses with the coming of new generations (Berry, 2007). It can be inferred then, that for immigrant cultures that have undergone significant trauma, including dislocation, war or genocide, and therefore feel that their culture and identity are being threatened, acculturation may be an especially difficult process. Despite their hesitations, Armenians who immigrated to the United States following the genocide had no choice but to assimilate into the dominant American society as quickly as possible in order to succeed as new inhabitants of the United States (Okoomian, 2002). As such, many had to go through a process of assimilation, where they gave up some, many all, of their values, beliefs and norms to be able to be accepted within the larger and more dominant society. Armenians that began the process of immigration after the 1970s, seemed to have less of a difficult time within the process of acculturation, since many cultural components, including schools, religious organizations and institutions were well set up by earlier immigrants (Okoomian, 2002). In a study conducted by Ayvazian (2008), with the goals of considering the role of acculturation in regards to opinions about mental illness and help seeking behaviors in Armenian American women, the results indicated that higher acculturation levels were not related to positive attitudes towards helping-seeking behaviors (Ayvazian, 2008). In the same regard, Armenian American women that did express positive attitudes or opinions about mental illness, was the greatest predictor of help-seeking behaviors. The terms acculturation, assimilation, and ethnic identity are often poorly understood and differentiated even in current literature on the subject. Phinney (1990) writes that ethnic identity is the degree to which an individual identifies with the ethnic group to which he or she belongs. It is reasonable to then conclude that peoples with a greater sense of ethnic identity exhibit resistance to assimilate into the dominant culture that surrounds them. As previously mentioned, Armenians are a collectivistic culture, firmly planted in values of family, culture, religion and language.
Within this lens, it can be understood how difficult it may feel for Armenians, especially those living outside of their country, in the U.S., facing mental health issues. For Armenians, given that mental illness or psychological issues have not been a part of the norm, or even given attention in terms of education, many feel that it is shameful or embarrassing to talk about psychological symptoms such as anxiety and/or depression. Furthermore, many Armenians hold the strong belief that if someone begins to exhibit symptoms that may seem atypical, then they may be regarded as “crazy.” Since people’s opinions, or the community’s opinion at large takes significance, Armenians will keep these matters private, for fear of shame and embarrassment (Arzumanian, 2008). Armenians and mental health. There is a lack of research that investigates Armenian Americans’ perception of mental health issues. Much of the information presented and discussed comes from doctoral dissertations and projects; some others come from novels, non-fiction, and from anecdotal evidence. Arzumanian (2008) focused a doctoral dissertation on the stigma and barriers present amongst Armenians that hinder their use of mental health services. Arzumanian (2008) concluded that Armenian Americans underutilize mental health services, including
psychotherapy. It is important to consider the many barriers that exist explaining this phenomenon of under-utilized services. Across the literature, authors are consistently finding that stigma and shame are significant barriers to seeking mental health services. Shame is the leading factor found by a number of authors that keeps Armenian Americans from seeking mental health assistance (Arslanian, 2003; Arzumanian 2008; Minassian, 2010; Yesayan, 2014). Fear that a matter as private as mental health becoming public and therefore compromising the reputation of the person and the family that person belongs to serves as a significant barrier to moving forward with the mental health service seeking process. According to Ayvazian (2008) and Minassian (2010), many Armenians will also choose to seek assistance with a primary care physician before they make steps to see a mental health professional. Although scarce experimental research
Culture is a collection of religion, traditions, and beliefs that are passed down from generation to generation. Culture is created and maintained through the repetition of stories and behavior. It is never definite because it is continuously being modified to match current trends, however, historical principles are still relevant. With respect to mental illness, culture is crucial to how people choose to deal with society and the methods used to diagnose and cope with mental illnesses. In Watters’ The Mega-Marketing Depression of Japan, he focuses on how Japan and other cultures define depression, but also displays how the influence of American treatments in eastern countries eventually becomes the international standards. Even though the
The father is recognised and acknowledged as the head of the family and household, in charge of the family’s spiritual life and providing the family’s sustenance while wives are subordinate to their husband. Males provide overall leadership within the community. They are responsible for educating young boys in masculine areas such as farming and woodwork. Females are to do the same with young girls, educating them in feminine areas such as running a household and homemaking skills. Unmarried women may work outside the home yet married women are not allowed to work and are expected to hold their families and house as the priority. Gender dictates those within the Amish society, with their roles clearly structured and set out. Unlike the Amish, this strict definition of gender roles doesn’t apply to me. There is a certain degree of restriction within Australian society in me being a young, female student. Mainstream Western society still values the traits of being feminine with the media constantly reinforcing feminie standards. In my macro world, as a female, I am expected to be soft, pretty and ladylike. This value, my culture and heritage come with the expectation for a woman to marry, have children, maintain a household yet also participate within society in working. However, societal expectations for females within mainstream society are slowly being broken. There is the implication that females cannot work once they become mothers, but there is no set of defined rules for females restricting them to traditional roles, despite the societal expectation for women to conform to
Child rearing and family structure within the Hispanic culture is noticeably different than what is present in the mainstream Western culture of today. One apparent difference is in gender roles. There exists a vastly different expectation in Hispanic culture for males and females. The male is considered to be the independent breadwinner, and the head of the household. Accordingly, the female role is one of submission and provider of childcare. In contrast, it is more than acceptable in Western culture for a female to maintain a non-traditional role. Hispanic culture additionally differs from Western culture in the traditional makeup of the family. Within Hispanic culture the extended family plays a huge role
Family structure and stability have constantly evolved and been researched in aspects of sociology. Following World War II, the family ideology in the 1950’s was brought to the attention of Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales (1955) whom demonstrated how transitioning from an agricultural society to that of an industrialization one played an important role in altering family life and structure. Parsons and Bales further expressed how gender role specialization was vital in the continuous of family solidarity. The “instrumental” male father role as the leader of the family responsible for providing the income and support as the “expressive” role which is that of the female mother delivers her contribution to the family through house work and nurture
3) Surgeon General's Report: "Mental Health- Culture, Race, Ethnicity" . A supplement to "Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General 1999."
Culture has a huge influence on how people view and deal with psychological disorders. Being able to successfully treat someone for a mental illness has largely to do with what they view as normal in their own culture. In Western cultures we think that going to a counselor to talk about our emotions or our individual problems and/or getting some type of drug to help with our mental illness is the best way to overcome and treat it, but in other cultures that may not be the case. In particular Western and Asian cultures vary in the way they deal with psychological disorders. In this paper I am going to discuss how Asian cultures and Western cultures are similar and different in the way they view psychological disorders, the treatments and likelihood of getting treatment, culture bound disorders, and how to overcome the differences in the cultures for optimal treatments.
Ethnic Armenians have resided in the Middle Eastern region of the world since approximately 3500 BC. Armenians lived and still live in many Middle Eastern countries such as Armenia, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Azerbaijan, and the republic of Georgia. Armenians have their own language and alphabet and have a very unique culture, which has set them apart from other countries and ethnic groups. In 300 AD, there was not a single nation who had Christianity as their national religion. “Following the advent of Christianity, Armenia became the very first nation to accept it as the state religion.” Armenian pride in their culture and way of life never wavered, even throughout being conquered by different nations. Armenian lands were taken over by many different nations on several different occasions, but they finally ended up in the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s, when ...
And some researcher has suggested that this model does not reduce stigma. (Thomas Szasz, 2002) states “Liberation by oppression: a comparative study of slavery and psychiatry”. Szasz argues that mental health is a rhetorical invention itself. Psychiatric often stigmatise by insisting that mental illness problems are brain diseases and most Psychiatrist doesn’t see these things as ‘disease ‘ . Thomas SZAZ claims mental illness would only refer to behavioural deviations that have a well-defined organic basis. Other deviant behaviours the product of “problems of living”. Brown and Harris (1978) found major negative life events make people vulnerable to clinical depression. Other researchers found that certain types of life events are more likely to be associated with a development of mental disorders than others—events that are “no normative, unexpected, uncontrollable, clustered in time.” The key problem with this explanation is that coerced and forced medication is generally wrong and that psychiatrists do not warn individual about many of psychiatric drugs potential side
Society has seen the male dynamic of superiority, designation as the “bread winner”, or head of household for centuries. Women were specifically assigned to the roles of wife, mother, and nurturer through the process of the sexual or gendered division of labor. However, that has not always been the case. Over centuries of change and shifts in economic development, the roles of women have changed to adapt to their specific roles in society. The status of the individuals in society was defined by sex, age, physical trai...
Psychological distress, acculturation, and help-seeking attitudes were all measured using specific indexes and scales set for the point of interest. The hypotheses of this research was that even within the African American community, one would find disparities in the treatment of psychological issues – just based on the method of acculturation used, and their views on society. There are 4 basic modes of acculturation: traditionalist, assimilationist, integrationist, and marginalist. It is thought that the integrationist acculturation strategy is the best for optimizing and maximizing well-being. Although there is not a difference in the number of African Americans that have mental health problems when compared to European-Americans, the percentage of those who seek professional mental health services due to emotional distress is representatively lower. The rate at which African Americans receive psychological help services is half as much as that of European Americans – there is a need for an explanation of that statistic. The goal of this paper is to determine the reasoning behind the help-seeking disparities in African Americans and the field of psychological health. In order to make health services fair, we must first understand the reasoning behind why or why not one would seek out professional help in the first place. Understanding ethno cultural attitudes and other cultural variables will allow the health care field to better relate and help all people more uniformly and to the best of their needs.
The only instances that cause a debate on mental health is when an individual does something that is criminal or hard to comprehend. The media get experts to look in on the catastrophe, and explain why they did it. Mental Illness is a worldwide problem and is often considered a "Hidden epidemic" as it stretches to institutions like jail, schools, family, and the media. Most mentally ill people are afraid to seek treatment mostly due to the stigma, prejudice, and discrimination that are attached to the label. The Label that comes with being mentally ill often leads to depression. Mental illness is largely misunderstood in the United States and can be treated; the following paragraphs reveal treatment, as well as causes and effects of stigmas on society, poverty, Insurance, the educational system, and the media.
Russia culture is very different from any other culture that I have ever read about. This is a country that is dominated by males. Males actually run the county of Russia. The men are so dominated that every Russian women dream is to be married and have a family with these men. Russia is known for its poor society. In the book Sakharov he mentions how he moved from one place to another. He first was in Moscow’s larger apartments with his family. In this apartment there were six families. With thin the six families they had to share the kitchen and the bathroom. Then he states that he moved into a very old house and in this old house there was a leaking ceiling. With in this house there were still six families that shared everything. (Sakharov 24-25)
Throughout history, the roles of men and women in the home suggested that the husband would provide for his family, usually in a professional field, and be the head of his household, while the submissive wife remained at home. This wife’s only jobs included childcare, housekeeping, and placing dinner on the table in front of her family. The roles women and men played in earlier generations exemplify the way society limited men and women by placing them into gender specific molds; biology has never claimed that men were the sole survivors of American families, and that women were the only ones capable of making a pot roast. This depiction of the typical family has evolved. For example, in her observation of American families, author Judy Root Aulette noted that more families practice Egalitarian ideologies and are in favor of gender equality. “Women are more likely to participate in the workforce, while men are more likely to share in housework and childcare (apa…).” Today’s American families have broken the Ward and June Cleaver mold, and continue to become stronger and more sufficient. Single parent families currently become increasingly popular in America, with single men and women taking on the roles of both mother and father. This bend in the gender rules would have, previously, been unheard of, but in the evolution of gender in the family, it’s now socially acceptable, and very common.
Gender roles are extremely important to the functioning of families. The family is one of the most important institutions. It can be nurturing, empowering, and strong. Some families are still very traditional. The woman or mother of the family stays at home to take care of the children and household duties. The man or father figure goes to work so that he can provide for his family. Many people believe that this is the way that things should be. Gender determines the expectations for the family. This review will explain those expectations and how it affects the family.
To thoroughly elaborate on the institution of family we most look at the family as it was before and how much it has changed over time. Throughout the years we are recognizing that the family is slowly being replaced by other agents of socialization. Families in the past consisted of a mother and a father and most times children. We are, as many societies a patriarchal society; men are usually the head of the households. This has always been considered the norm.