Transcripts were independently coded by a team of researchers (n=4) and the final codebook included codes present in at least half of the transcripts. Seven focus groups were conducted with 54 participants (Mage=20.11 years, SD=2.52), all of whom had lived in the United States for at least three years (63.0% of the sample was born in the US). This study used focus group methodology to identify culturally-specific barriers to, and facilitators of, eating disorder (ED) treatment-seeking for South Asian (SA) American women. Peer-helper interventions may benefit from culture-specific re-norming messages and by addressing the role of gender in peer-helping. Gender (but not race) moderated these associations such that the indirect and direct effects were stronger from men than women. Undergraduate students (N = 5,183) from the national Healthy Minds Study completed measures of help-seeking stigma and peer-helping behaviors.Ĭonditional Process Modeling revealed that personal stigma fully mediated the link between public stigma and peer-helping behaviors. The current study examined a moderated mediation model in which the relationship between public stigma and peer intervention behaviors was mediated by personal stigma and moderated by race and gender categories. Internalized public stigma (ie, personal stigma) may prevent peer-helpers from aiding others, and such help-negating effects may depend on contextual factors such as race and gender. Theoretical and practical implications for mental health promotion and culturally sensitive clinical practices are explored.Ĭollege students are most likely to seek psychological help from their peers. Stigma and concept breadth both partially mediated the group difference in attitudes. Compared to White Americans, Asian Americans reported higher levels of stigma and narrower concepts of mental disorder, both of which were associated with less positive help-seeking attitudes. Mediation analyses examined whether stigma and concept breadth mediated group differences in attitudes. A sample of 212 American participants (102 Asian Americans and 110 White Americans) were assessed on personal stigma, help-seeking attitudes, and mental disorder concept breadth. This study aimed to test whether group differences in the breadth of the mental disorder concept account for group differences in help-seeking attitudes. Individuals and groups with less inclusive concepts of disorder may be less likely to identify problems as appropriate for mental health treatment. An alternative explanation is that low help-seeking might also reflect holding a relatively circumscribed concept of mental disorder. Explanations for this effect typically point to elevated levels of stigma in these populations. Asian American populations demonstrate relatively low levels of help-seeking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)Įthnic and racial group differences in help-seeking are a barrier to the effective and equitable delivery of mental health services. They also suggest that efforts to reduce disparities in attitudes toward counseling for South Asian students specifically should incorporate interventions to reduce the increased stigma expressed by this community, particularly related to a desire for social distance from persons with a mental illness. These findings support a long-standing conjecture in the literature regarding the increased significance of stigma processes on disparities in majority-minority help-seeking attitudes. Second, in terms of mediation, increased personal stigma, but not perceived stigma, expressed by South Asians partially mediated and accounted for 32% of the observed difference in attitudes toward counseling services. First, the authors found that Caucasian (n = 74) college students revealed more positive attitudes toward counseling than did South Asian (n = 54) students. Using mediation analyses, the authors examined 2 aspects of stigma posited to affect help-seeking attitudes: personal stigmatizing views and perceptions of the public's stigmatizing views directed toward persons with mental illness. The authors directly tested whether stigmatizing beliefs regarding mental illness might explain such differential attitudes toward counseling in a South Asian and Caucasian student sample. Previous research has established that Asian Americans use mental health services less frequently and hold poorer attitudes toward psychological counseling than Caucasians.
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