No abstract

The current study investigated the psychosocial and cultural predictors of psychological help-seeking based on the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA: Ajzen and Fishbein 1980) in a sample of 223 adult Latin American immigrants living in Canada. Using path analysis, the results provided empirical support for the TRA, as both help-seeking attitudes and subjective norms were found to influence participants' help-seeking intentions. Moreover, the re-specified culturally-expanded model showed a good fit to the data and revealed the direct and indirect effects that bi-directional acculturation (Latino and Canadian Cultural orientations), familism, and collective coping had on help-seeking intentions. The results point to the integral roles familism and subjective norms of social referents (e.g., parents, siblings) play in the help-seeking decision process among Latin Americans. Limitations, future research directions and clinical implications are considered and discussed.

Parental overprotection, involving tight control of children and lack of parental warmth, although culturally tolerated in traditional Asian societies, may result in significant psychopathology for Asian children growing up in modern Western societies. The therapist working with disturbed children from Asian families with excessively overprotective parents can address the child's needs for emotional autonomy and warmth while remaining sensitive to the cultural values supporting family interdependence. The paradigm of the “autonomous-relational self” (Kagitçibasi, 1996b), combining aspects of independent and interdependence, provides a theoretical foundation for clinical work. This paradigm is applied in the treatment of three Asian American early adolescents having overprotective parents and manifesting significant psychopathology. Both cultural and psychodynamic aspects supported the parental overprotection; nevertheless, the therapist was able to achieve some gains in emotional autonomy for these children.

No abstract

No abstract