Asian Canadians consistently underutilize mainstream mental health services. This study investigates how the definition and meaning of mental illness relates to barriers Asian Canadians find in accessing mental health services. Personal interviews were conducted with 60 Asian Canadians in a northern community in the province of British Columbia. Content analyses revealed six themes that defined a mental health problem: (a) feeling a lack of purpose in life, (b) feeling lonely, (c) difficulties understanding and dealing with a new environment, (d) high anxiety levels, (c) descriptions of mental health problems as somatic illnesses, and (f) perceptions of mental illness as serious and potentially not treatable. It was also found that poor English language ability and a lack of understanding of mainstream culture were major barriers to accessing mental health facilities. Findings of this study provided valuable insights concerning Asian immigrants' hesitancy accessing and utilizing mainstream mental health facilities. The many poignant personal anecdotes illustrate that the migration and adaptation processes can be painful and full of anguish. Unless their experiences are better understood and accepted, many Asian Canadians will likely remain outside of the available mainstream mental health facilities.

This study examined whether culture plays a role in the use of interruption in simulated doctor-patient conversations. Participants were 40 Canadians and 40 Chinese who formed 40 dyads in four experimental conditions: Canadian speaker-Canadian listener, Chinese speaker-Chinese listener, Chinese speaker-Canadian listener, and Canadian speaker-Chinese listener. All conversations were videotaped and microanalyzed. The data generated four findings: (a) In the Chinese speaker-Chinese listener interactions, cooperative interruptions occurred more frequently than intrusive interruptions; (b) when Canadians served as doctors, the doctors performed significantly more intrusive interruptions than cooperative ones; (c) the two intercultural groups engaged in more unsuccessful interruptions than the two intracultural groups; and (d) in the intercultural conditions, the occurrences of intrusive interruptions were greater than cooperative interruptions. This phenomenon provides unequivocal support for communication accommodation theory. The findings point to a hypothesis that conversational interruption may be a pancultural phenomenon, whereas interruption styles may be culture specific.

This study investigated cultural variations in health conceptions and practices using a quasiexperimental design. A total of 60 participants, recruited from three cultural groups in Canada, were individually interviewed between the fall of 2009 and the fall of 2010. Transcribed interviews were quantified according to the importance participants ascribed to emergent themes. The data generated three intriguing findings: (a) Consistent with an interdependent self-construal or ecological self, First Nations participants were more likely to report health conceptions and practices that expand beyond the individual self to include their family, the community, and the environment when compared with Anglophones and Francophones of European ancestry; (b) First Nations participants placed more importance on maintaining their traditions and culture as a health-promoting strategy, compared with Anglophones and Francophones; and (c) some of the health conceptions identified by all three groups significantly predicted the practices they engage in to promote health. These findings suggest that culture has a noticeable impact on health conceptions, which in turn influence health practices. There are at least two important implications: (a) Health policy makers need to take into account the role culture plays in the way people conceptualize health to ensure that health policies and programs reflect the particular beliefs and needs of their target populations and (b) health-care professionals need to be aware of the diverse views of their patients to provide culturally appropriate care.

No abstract

Amid criticisms of current paper-and-pencil type questionnaires measuring self-construal across cultural groups, the authors used a graphic representation scale to examine whether Anglo Canadians (N = 220) were more independent than Mainland Chinese (N = 196) and Indians (N = 212) in construing their relationships with closest family member, family members, closest friend, friends, (other) relatives, colleagues, and neighbors. Data generated 5 intriguing findings: (a) Chinese were more interdependent than Canadians but less so than Indians, indicating that Chinese culture has become more individualistic. (b) Canadians were more independent than Chinese in 6 relationship dimensions but were as interdependent as Chinese in self-closest-friend connectedness, somewhat contradicting 1 assumption of theories of independent-interdependent self-construal and individualism-collectivism (I-C). (c) Canadians were more independent than Indians in all relationship dimensions, supporting theories of independent-interdependent self-construal and I-C. (d) Chinese were as interdependent as Indians in self-closest-family-member, self-close-family-members, and self-relatives connectedness but more independent than Indians in the other categories of self-other relationships. (e) Participants' age did not have strong correlations with variables measuring self-construal in any sample, indicating that a person's attachment style may not change greatly over a lifespan. The authors discussed theoretical and methodological implications.