© 2007 American Public Health Association DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2006.098541
Jennifer Abe-Kim is with Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, Calif. David T. Takeuchi, Seunghye Hong, Hoa Appel, and Ethel Nicdao are with the University of Washington, Seattle. Nolan Zane and Stanley Sue are with the University of California, Davis. Michael S. Spencer is with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Margarita Alegría is with the Cambridge Health Alliance, Cambridge, Mass, and the Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Jennifer Abe-Kim, PhD, Loyola Marymount University, One LMU Drive, Suite 4600, Los Angeles, CA, 900452659 (e-mail: jabekim{at}lmu.edu)
ABSTRACT
Objectives. We examined rates of mental healthrelated service use (i.e., any, general medical, and specialty mental health services) as well as subjective satisfaction with and perceived helpfulness of care in a national sample of Asian Americans, with a particular focus on immigration-related factors. Methods. Data were derived from the National Latino and Asian American Study (20022003). Results. About 8.6% of the total sample (n=2095) sought any mental healthrelated services; 34.1% of individuals who had a probable diagnosis sought any services. Rates of mental healthrelated service use, subjective satisfaction, and perceived helpfulness varied by birthplace and by generation. US-born Asian Americans demonstrated higher rates of service use than did their immigrant counterparts. Third-generation or later individuals who had a probable diagnosis had high (62.6%) rates of service use in the previous 12 months. Conclusions. Asian Americans demonstrated lower rates of any type of mental healthrelated service use than did the general population, although there are important exceptions to this pattern according to nativity status and generation status. Our results underscore the importance of immigration-related factors in understanding service use among Asian Americans. Most Asian Americans were born outside the United States, which results in a tremendous amount of cultural and linguistic diversity within this population.1 The high proportion of immigrants in the Asian American population presents challenges for mental health systems in many communities, particularly in determining whether current services can adequately meet the needs of diverse Asian American groups. Asian immigrants may have unique patterns of help-seeking and may receive a different quality of care from mental health service providers than do their US-born counterparts.1,2 Without adequate data on the differences between Asian immigrants and US-born Asian Americans, it is difficult to plan for appropriate mental health services. Empirical findings on the association between immigration-related variables and mental health service use are somewhat mixed,35 although they suggest that US-born Asian Americans may be more likely to use mental health services than Asians who have immigrated to the United States.68 Information regarding Asian Americans satisfaction with mental health care is scarce. However, data on perceptions of general health services suggest that Asian Americans are less satisfied with their medical care than their European American counterparts.912 Levels of mental health service need and corresponding rates of service use may vary across different Asian American groups,13,14 as well as being affected by the availability of culturally responsive services.15,16 Nonetheless, in general, Asian Americans seem reluctant to seek services in response to their emotional distress.1719 Even among Asian Americans who have a probable mental disorder (i.e., they met criteria for a diagnosis according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition [DSM-IV],20 based on a structured interview, the World Health Organization Composite International Diagnostic Interview21), only a small proportion (17%), according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, appear to seek services.1 Barriers identified as negatively affecting the use of mental healthrelated services include cultural barriers (e.g., stigma, loss of face, causal beliefs),2,22,23 culturally unresponsive services (lack of language match, lack of ethnic match, poor cross-cultural understanding),18 limited access to care (cost, lack of insurance coverage),24 and lack of awareness or understanding of services.1,2527 Indeed, for this population, familiarity with Western modes of treatment for mental health problems may be associated with more positive attitudes toward counseling, but not necessarily a greater willingness to seek help.28 Previous studies of Asian Americans have been largely based on unrepresentative samples of that population, including (1) treated populations seen in public sector mental health service settings,18,29,30 (2) college students seen in university counseling settings,3,5,31,32 and (3) convenience samples of nonclinical community-based populations.4,33,34 Help-seeking, immigration factors, and treatment experiences have typically not been the major focus of these investigations. These studies have focused on a limited number of psychiatric disorders, usually major depression or psychological distress, and hence could miss the effects of other mental health conditions on service use among immigrant and US-born Asian American populations. We addressed some of these limitations by using a national sample of Asian Americans that included a wide range of psychiatric disorders among both Asian immigrants and US-born Asian Americans. We examined use of mental healthrelated services during a 12-month period, as well as the associations among different immigration-related characteristics, including nativity status, years in the United States, age at time of immigration, and generational status, on the basis of data from the first national epidemiological household survey of Asian Americans in the United States: the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS).3537 The objectives of our study were to (1) examine rates of mental healthrelated service use among immigrant and US-born Asian Americans during a 12-month period, (2) identify patterns of help seeking as they varied by need and immigration-related characteristics, (3) explore perceptions of satisfaction with care and helpfulness, and (4) compare differences in patterns of mental healthrelated service use among individuals who had a probable need for services (i.e., a DSM-IV diagnosis within the 12 months on the basis of the structured interview21) and those who had no probable need for services (because the need for treatment is a major factor in seeking help38). These analyses were made in coordination with the broader Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Studies effort, which provided the opportunity to compare how immigration-related factors are associated with use of mental health services across 3 major racial/ethnic populations (Asians, Blacks, and Latinos).37 METHODS
Participants and Sample Design The sampling procedure has been previously documented35,36 and included 3 stages: (1) core sampling, in which primary sampling units (defined as metropolitan statistical areas or county units) and secondary sampling units (formed from contiguous groupings of census blocks) were selected with probability proportionate to size); from the primary and secondary units, housing units and household members were sampled; (2) high-density supplemental sampling to oversample census block groups with 5% or greater density of target ancestry groups; and (3) second respondent sampling to recruit participants from households in which 1 eligible member had already been interviewed. Individuals of Asian ancestry who did not belong to the target groups under which these geographical areas were classified were still eligible to participate. Weighting corrections were developed to take into account the joint probabilities for selection under the 3 components of the NLAAS sampling design. A total of 2095 Asian Americans (1611 primary respondents; 484 second respondents) were recruited between May 2002 and November 2003 as part of the larger NLAAS survey. The final weighted response rate for the combined sample was 65.6%. Detailed sample characteristics have been reported in other NLAAS studies.35,36,37 All participants were interviewed by trained bilingual interviewers, who used computer-assisted interviewing software. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with participants in the core and high-density samples, unless the respondent specifically requested a telephone interview, or if face-to-face interviewing was not feasible. Interviews were conducted via telephone with second respondents. As a measure of quality control, a random sample of participants who had completed interviews was re-contacted to validate the data. A $50 incentive initially provided to participants was later increased to $150 to reduce nonresponses.37
Measures
Use
Treatment Ratings
Diagnosis
Analyses The prevalence of use of any service during the 12 months was also compared for individuals with and without a probable DSM-IV diagnosis during the 12 months. Weighted percentages and 95% confidence intervals are reported. We conducted significance tests for differences among estimates for proportions using a RaoScott statistic for contingency tables. Stata version 9.2 (Stata Corp, College Station, Tex) software survey commands that allow the estimation of standard errors in the presence of stratification and clustering were used to account for sample design effects. Sampling weights37 were applied to all analyses to generalize results to the Asian American population in the United States RESULTS
Among all respondents, in the previous 12 months, 8.6% sought help from any service, 4.3% sought help from general medical providers, and 3.1% sought help from mental health providers. Table 1
Individuals who were categorized as third or later generation had higher rates of use of any services (19.3%) than did individuals who were first (7.4%) or second (8.1%) generation, as well as higher rates of both specialty mental health and general medical care use. Years in the United States and English-language proficiency were not associated with service use at all; age at time of immigration was associated with seeking help from the general medical sector only.
We were also interested in the experiences of Asian Americans who used different services for their problems. Among respondents who gained access to different mental healthrelated services, ratings did not vary significantly by immigration-related characteristics but did vary by ethnicity (Table 2
By contrast, a significantly lower proportion of individuals born outside the United States (51.5%) than US-born individuals (72.6%) reported that treatment helped a lot (Table 3
A critical issue that affects the use of services is whether people have a mental disorder. We stratified the sample into respondents with and without a DSM-IV diagnosis during the 12-month period to assess the use of services for the ethnicity and immigration-related characteristics described in the "Methods" section. As shown in Table 4
DISCUSSION We investigated patterns of mental healthrelated service use and ratings of subjective satisfaction and perceived helpfulness in a national sample of Asian American groups, and examined within-group variations by ethnicity and immigration-related characteristics. Our findings indicate that, overall, Asian Americans appear to have lower rates of mental healthrelated service use compared with the general population; only 8.6% of Asian Americans sought help from any services versus 17.9% of the general population in the NCS-R.39 Differences in rates of help seeking persisted among individuals who had a demonstrated need for services: 34.1% of all Asian Americans who had a probable DSM-IV diagnosis during a 12-month period sought any services compared with 41.1% of all individuals who had a DSM-IV diagnosis during a 12-month period in the NCS-R sample.39 However, our study also shows that, although the overall finding of low rates of help seeking among Asian Americans are consistent with findings from previous studies,18,19,29,30,40 there are important differences in service use between immigrants and US-born individuals. For instance, use of services differed according to nativity status: US-born individuals used mental health services at higher rates than did immigrants. Second-generation individuals (i.e., children of immigrants) were more similar to immigrants in their use of services than to third-generation individuals. Third-generation individuals were more similar in their pattern of service use to the general population sampled in the NCS-R (19.3% vs 17.9%, respectively, for seeking any service). Furthermore, among individuals with a probable diagnosis of a mental disorder, rates of service use among third-generation Asian Americans were higher than those of their counterparts in the NCS-R sample (62.6% vs 41.1%).39 The examination of immigration-related characteristics enabled a more refined view of service use among Asian Americans, and nativity status and generation emerged as the most important indicators of within-group differences. These differences partially extended into perceptions of their treatment experiences. Perceived helpfulness of care varied by immigration-related characteristics: US-born Asian Americans, particularly third-generation or later, gave higher helpfulness ratings for any services. Ratings of subjective satisfaction, however, did not differ by immigration-related characteristics. These findings probably reflect the fact that ratings of "highly satisfied" and "satisfied" were combined, so that a large majority of the sample endorsed being satisfied with care. Satisfaction ratings tend to be highly skewed even without combining categories. We cannot determine from these data the nature of any barriers that may explain why birthplace and generation affect patterns of service use and perceived helpfulness of care. The finding that second-generation Asian Americans are similar to immigrants in their patterns of service use, along with treatment ratings of perceived helpfulness, suggests that more general factors, or even cultural factors (such as stigma or loss of face), may act as constraints on service use, beyond such immigrant-specific barriers as language or knowledge of services. For instance, our data showed that English-language proficiency was not associated with service use, despite the fact that language has been identified as a major barrier to service use in several other studies.23,40 Thus, in providing services to Asian American populations, mental health providers may benefit from knowing that second-generation individuals are more similar to their immigrant parents (than to their highly Americanized children) in their patterns of service use. Nevertheless, our data also indicate that immigrants require the most intensive outreach efforts to facilitate service use. The limitations of this study must be noted. Data were based on a cross-sectional survey that used retrospective measures of service use and diagnosis, so our findings are subject to the recall and reporting biases inherent in these approaches. Further, although these measures have been used in other investigations of Asian American populations,40,41 their validity has not yet been thoroughly established across different ethnic populations, let alone across Asian American ethnic groups. Also, given our focus on immigration-related characteristics, we did not consider other factors that may affect patterns of service use, such as gender, regional variations, and income. Finally, all "other Asians" were lumped together in a single category, even though they represent a diversity of languages, ethnicities, cultures, and practices. However, our study represents an initial effort to present a national picture of mental healthrelated service use and perceptions of treatment among different Asian American groups, further distinguished by differences in need, ethnicity, and immigration experiences. As such, it represents an important and provocative glimpse into immigrant and US-born Asian help-seeking patterns and perceptions of treatment in the United States.
Acknowledgments The NLAAS is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (grants U01 MH62209 and U01 MH62207), with additional support from the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research at the National Institutes of Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Human Participant Protection Footnotes
Contributors Accepted for publication September 1, 2006. References 1. US Department of Health and Human Services. Mental Health Care for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. In: Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 2001;107126. 2. Leong F, Lau A. Barriers to Providing Effective Mental Health Services to Asian Americans. Ment Health Serv Res. 2001;3:201214.[CrossRef][Medline] 3. Gim R, Atkinson D, Whitely S. Asian American acculturation, severity of concerns, and willingness to see a counselor. J Counseling Psychol. 1990;37:281285.[CrossRef][Web of Science] 4. Ying Y, Miller L. Help seeking behavior and attitude of Chinese Americans regarding psychological problems. Am J Community Psychol. 1992;20:549556.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] 5. Atkinson D, Lowe S, Matthews L. Asian American acculturation, gender, and willingness to seeking counseling. J Multicultural Counseling Dev. 1995;23:130138. 6. Kung W. Cultural and practical barriers to seeking mental health treatment for Chinese Americans. J Community Psychol. 2004;32:2743.[CrossRef][Web of Science] 7. Kung W. Chinese Americans help seeking for emotional distress. Soc Serv Rev. 2003;77:110134.[CrossRef][Web of Science] 8. Young K. Help seeking for emotional/psychological problems among Chinese Americans in the Los Angeles area: an examination of the effects of acculturation. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering. 1998;58:6833. 9. Ngo-Metzger Q, Legedza AT, Phillips RS. Asian Americans reports of their health care experiences: results of a national survey. J Gen Intern Med. 2004;19: 111119.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] 10. Saha S, Arbelaez JJ, Cooper LA. Patientphysician relationships and racial disparities in the quality of health care. Am J Public Health. 2003;93(10):17131719. 11. Meredith LS, Siu AL. Variation and quality of self-report health data: Asians and Pacific Islanders compared with other groups. Medical Care. 1995;33:11201131.[Web of Science][Medline] 12. Murra-Garcia J, Selby JV, Schmittdiel J, Grambach K, Quesenberry CP. Racial and ethnic differences in a patient survey: patients values, ratings, and reports regarding physician primary care performance in a large health maintenance organization. Medical Care. 2000; 38(3):300310.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] 13. Akutsu P, Chu J. Clinical problems that initiate professional help seeking behaviors from Asian Americans. Professional Psychol: Res Pract. 2006;37:407415.[CrossRef] 14. Kinzie J, Sack W, Angell R, Clarke G, Rath B. The prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder and its clinical significance among Southeast Asian refugees. Am J Psychiatry. 1989;147:913917.[Web of Science] 15. Okazaki S. Treatment delay among Asian American patients with severe mental illness. Am J Orthopsychiatry. 2000;70:5864.[Web of Science][Medline] 16. Takeuchi D, Sue S, Yeh M. Return rates and outcomes from ethnicity-specific mental health programs in Los Angeles. Am J Public Health. 1995;85:638643. 17. Ying Y, Hu L. Public outpatient mental health services: use and outcome among Asian Americans. Am J Orthopsychiatry. 1994;64:448455.[Web of Science][Medline] 18. Sue S, Fujino D, Hu L, Takeuchi D, Zane N. Community mental health services for ethnic minority groups: a test of the cultural responsiveness hypothesis. J Consult Clin Psychol. 1991;59:533540.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] 19. Cheung FK, Snowden L. Community mental health and ethic minority populations. Community Ment Health J. 1990;26:277291.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] 20. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association; 1994. 21. Kessler RC, Ustun T. The World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative Version of the World Health Organization (WHO) Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI). Int J Methods Psychiatr Res. 2004;13: 93121.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] 22. Liao H-Y, Rounds J, Klein A. A test of Cramers (1999) help-seeking model and acculturation effects with Asian and Asian American college students. J Counseling Psychol. 2005;52:400411.[CrossRef][Web of Science] 23. Yeh M, Hough R, McCabe K, Lau A, Garland A. Parental beliefs about the causes of child problems: exploring racial/ethnic patterns. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2004;43:605612.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] 24. Abe-Kim J, Takeuchi D. Cultural competence and quality of care: issues for mental health service delivery in managed care. Clin Psychol: Sci Pract. 1996;3: 273295.[Web of Science] 25. Sue S, Zane N, Young K. Research on psychotherapy with culturally diverse populations. In: Bergin AE, Garfield SL, eds. Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change. 4th ed. New York, NY: Wiley & Sons; 1994: 783817. 26. Uba L. Asian Americans: Personality Patterns, Identity, and Mental Health. New York, NY: Guilford Press; 1994. 27. Uehara ES, Takeuchi DT, Smuckler M. Effects of combining disparate groups in the analysis of ethnic differences: variations among Asian American mental health service consumers in level of community functioning. Am J Community Psychol. 1994;22:8399.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] 28. Kim BS, Omizo MM. Asian cultural values, attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help, and willingness to see a counselor. The Counseling Psychologist. 2003;31:343361.[Abstract] 29. Matsuoka J, Breux C, Ryujin DH. National utilization of mental health services by Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders. J Community Psychol. 1997;25:141145.[CrossRef][Web of Science] 30. Barreto R, Segal S. Use of mental health services by Asian Americans. Psychiatric Services. 2005;56: 746748. 31. Tata S, Leong F. Individualism-collectivism, social-network orientation, and acculturation as predictors of attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help among Chinese Americans. J Counseling Psychol. 1994;41:280287.[CrossRef][Web of Science] 32. Atkinson DR, Gim R. Asian-American cultural identity and attitudes toward mental health services. J Counseling Psychol. 1989;36:209212.[CrossRef][Web of Science] 33. Nguyen QCX, Anderson LP. Vietnamese Americans attitudes toward seeking mental health services in relation to cultural variables. J Community Psychol. 2005;33:213231.[CrossRef][Web of Science] 34. Tabora B, Flaskerud J. Mental health beliefs, practices, and knowledge of Chinese American immigrant women. Issues in Mental Health Nursing. 1996;18: 173189. 35. Alegria M, Takeuchi D, Canino G, Duan N, Shrout P, Meng X-L. Considering context, place, and culture: the National Latino and Asian American Study. Int J Methods Psychiatr Res. 2004;13:208220.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] 36. Heeringa S, Wagner J, Torres M, Duan N, Adams T, Berglund P. Sample designs and sampling methods for the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Studies (CPES). Int J Methods Psychiatr Res. 2004;13:221240.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] 37. Pennell B, Bowers A, Carr D, et al. The development and implementation of the National Comorbidity Survey Replication, the National Survey of American Life, and the National Latino and Asian American Survey. Int J Methods Psychiatr Res. 2004;13:241269.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] 38. Pescosolido B, Boyer CA. How do people come to use mental health services? Current knowledge and changing perspectives. In: Horwitz A, Scheid T, eds. A Handbook for the Study of Mental Health: Social Context, Theories, and Systems. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press; 1999. 39. Wang P, Lane M, Olfson M, Pincus K, Kessler R. Twelve month use of mental health services in the United States: results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005;62: 629640. 40. Gong F, Gage S-L, Tacata L. Help seeking behavior among Filipino Americans: a cultural analysis and language. J Community Psychol. 2003;31(5664): 469488.[CrossRef][Web of Science] 41. Abe-Kim J, Takeuchi DT, Hwang W-C. Predictors of help seeking for emotional distress among Chinese Americans: family matters. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2002;70(5):11861190.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] This article has been cited by other articles:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||