Session: Integrating Community Experiences and Perspectives of Mental Distress and Help Seeking: Culturally Grounded Assessments and Interventions Addressing Disparities in Mental Health Among Asian Americans (Society for Social Work and Research 29th Annual Conference)

Despite ongoing efforts to enhance accessibility, racially and ethnically diverse individuals are utilizing mental health services at lower rates than Whites, with Asian Americans using the least. Although access to mental health services increase for emerging adults due to their semi-autonomy, the utilization rate remains low, and remains the lowest among Asian American young adults. Research and clinical practice to date has primarily utilized a biomedical framework to understand mental distress and avenues for help seeking that upholds Western definitions of mental health. Yet, Asian Americans hold culturally specific conceptualizations of mental health and help seeking that are derived from their cultural and local contexts which may counter Western approaches in the identification of and treatment of mental health problems. This highlights the gap in the current understanding of culturally grounded explanatory models of illness that guide the mental health beliefs and pathways to help seeking among Asian American communities.

This symposium seeks to address this gap through a collection of papers that examine culturally and contextually specific pathways to treatment engagement among Asian American. The papers each utilize measures and interventions on culturally specific mental distress and help seeking that have been developed through the collaboration and partnership with local Asian American communities. The first paper examines the culturally specific, lived experiences of mental distress of Asian American young adults, through a newly developed survey that was derived from focus groups with multi-generation Asian American community members (youth, adults, seniors). The second paper investigates how structural barriers (i.e. structural racism, limited access to services) intersects with cultural barriers (i.e. cultural stigma of mental health, culturally specific responses to distress) in Asian American young adults’ attitudes towards professional help seeking. The last paper examines the effectiveness of a pilot peer-led mental health literacy and engagement intervention in increasing openness to cultural help seeking and use of professional mental health services among Asian American young adults.

Through these three papers, the symposium aims to illustrate the importance of integrating the perspectives and experiences of the lay community members through the development of culturally grounded instruments and interventions. Culturally sensitive tools equip researchers and social workers with the means to understand situations from the perspectives of community members. Furthermore, these interventions provide effective ways to connect more deeply with community members, enhancing engagement and support.