Etiology beliefs moderate the influence of emotional self-control on willingness to see a counselor through help-seeking attitudes among Asian American students.

Abstract

To identify correlates of Asian American professional help-seeking, we tested a mediation model describing Asian American help-seeking (Asian value of emotional self-control → help-seeking attitudes → willingness to see a counselor; Hypothesis 1) in a sample of Asian American college students from the Pacific Northwest region of the United States (N = 232). We also examined biological and spiritual etiology beliefs as moderators of the mediation model (Hypotheses 2a and 2b). Our findings indicated that help-seeking attitudes significantly mediated the relation between emotional self-control and willingness to see a counselor, consistent with our mediation hypothesis. Furthermore, biological and spiritual etiology beliefs moderated this mediation model, providing partial support for our moderation hypotheses. Our findings suggest that researchers can contribute to the Asian American literature by investigating conditions in which established Asian American help-seeking models may or may not hold. In addition, the findings suggest additional nuanced ways for counselors to reach out to Asian American students to increase their mental health service utilization.

Self‐Stigma, Mental Health Literacy, and Attitudes Toward Seeking Psychological Help

“…A sample item is “I would want to get psychological help if I were worried or upset for a long period of time.” Fischer and Farina () reported that ATSPPH‐SF scores highly correlated with the full‐scale scores from the original measure, produced a good internal consistency coefficient (α = .84), and predicted past help seeking. The ATSPPH‐SF has demonstrated good internal consistency coefficients in samples of racially/ethnically diverse community adults (Gloria, Castellanos, Segura‐Herrera, & Mayorga, ) and college students (P. Y. Kim & Kendall, ). In the present study, we averaged item responses to generate a scale score and obtained an adequate internal consistency coefficient (α = .83).…”

Stigma, Loss of Face, and Help-Seeking Attitudes Among South Korean College Students

“…Previous counseling experience was included as a covariate based on empirical findings in the literature (e.g., P. Y. Kim & Kendall, 2015). Results based on 5,000 bootstrapped resamples revealed a statistically significant indirect effect of -.04, because its bias corrected 95% CI [-.06, -.03] did not contain 0.…”

Asian Americans’ Help-Seeking Attitudes: The Role of Cultural Values, Ethnic Identity, and Neighborhood Ethnic Density

“…These studies both viewed Asian Values as a single variable, but operationalized this variable as Emotional Self-Control. Kim and Kendall (2015) found that help-seeking attitudes mediated the relation between Emotional Self-Control and willingness to see a counselor.…”

“…Currently, only two investigations (Kim & Kendall, 2015;Kim, Kendall, & Chang 2016) have focused exclusively on Emotional Self-Control when exploring the relationship between help-seeking attitudes and Asian American values. These studies both viewed Asian Values as a single variable, but operationalized this variable as Emotional Self-Control.…”

“…Researchers have studied Asian American's attitudes towards seeking help for mental health difficulties in relation to a variety of factors, including stigma (Masuda & Boone, 2011), stigma tolerance (Ting & Hwang, 2009), acculturation and enculturation (Kim & Omizo, 2010;Miller, Yang, Hui, Choi, & Lim, 2011;Ruzek, Nguyen, & Herzog, 2011), the internalized model minority myth (Kim & Lee, 2014), and beliefs about the etiology of mental illness (Kim & Kendall, 2015). In addition, several have examined how Asian Americans' attitudes towards seeking help might be influenced by adherence to important cultural values (Gloria, Castellanos, Park, & Kim, 2008;Kim, 2007;Kim, Kendall, & Chang, 2016;Omizo, Kim, & Abel, 2008;Shea & Yeh, 2008).…”