Date of Award

2-17-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

First Advisor

Winston Seegobin, PsyD, Chair

Second Advisor

Amber Nelson, PsyD, Member

Third Advisor

Daniel Rodriguez, PsyD, Member

Abstract

Asian Americans continue to underutilize mental health and health care services for various reasons such as cultural values, acculturation/enculturation, and lack of familiarity with the healthcare system (Ruzek et al., 2011). There is little information about how much influence first-generation Asian immigrant parents have on influencing health-seeking behaviors and attitudes of their Asian American children. While second-generation Asian Americans demonstrate adherence to both Asian and Western values, they continue to be less likely to seek health services than any other ethnic group in the United States. In order to provide more culturally aware and culturally sensitive services for Asian Americans, there needs to be an understanding of why they underutilize health care services. A mixed methods approach was used to collect data with a quantitative portion utilizing various questionnaires to understand adherence to cultural values in relation to health-seeking behaviors/attitudes and semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain further insight on common themes participants have towards cultural values and health seeking behavior. The results of this study support existing research on the importance of keeping emotional and psychological problems private and practice of emotional self-control to manage distress was heavily emphasized. It also supported previous research in which an enculturated identity results in more positive health-seeking attitudes. The overall findings indicate strong correlations between medical help-seeking and adherence to both European American culture and Asian culture. Implications of this study include utilizing a culturally informed lens in treatment to understand conflicting cultural values, inherited stigmas and bias, as well as understanding of contextual identities that affect symptom presentation.

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