Spirituality and Treatment Choices by South and East Asian Women with Serious Mental Illness

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate how South and East Asian immigrant women who have diagnoses of serious mental illness make treatment choices in relation to spirituality and to explore how gender, cultural beliefs, and spirituality intersect with the process of choice. The findings reveal that the process of spiritual choice includes three interrelated phases: (1) identifying contributing factors, (2) exploring spiritual resources and strategies, and (3) living with the choices. Variations among health beliefs and health care decisions are explained and services that women see as being helpful are identified.

Perceptions of mental illness among Muslim general practitioners in South Africa

“…These findings concur with reports by Chiu et al [8] and Jacob et al [12] that the tendency to hide illness often resulted in GPs failing to detect mental illness, and many patients either being undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. Jacob et al [12] also found that doctors often believe that mental illness is managed within the family in Asian communities.…”

“…Participants elaborated on the above, stating that family issues have a serious impact on patients' wellbeing in the Lenasia community (reflecting financial pressures on married couples, both of whom often need to work, limited family time, marital conflicts, or changes in marital status such as divorce or death of a spouse). This concurs with Chiu et al 's [8] finding that Canadian Asian women reported becoming mentally ill due to their extremely stressful lifestyles when they were expected to work, take care of children and do household chores. Marital conflict and relationships with inlaws were exacerbating factors.…”

“…The typical busy Western lifestyle in Canada resulted in lack of family time and absence of social support from neighbours and friends, in contrast to lifestyles in India, where the community often gave support. [8] These results concur with studies in the SA context, where psychosocial factors, notably stress, have been identified as a major cause of mental disorders. [3,9] Stigma, secrecy and somatisation Most participants acknowledged that mental illness is often stigmatised in the Lenasia community.…”

Internalized stigma and its psychosocial correlates in Korean patients with serious mental illness

“…Some studies further suggested that stigma in Asian culture is more severe than that in Western culture (Whaley, 1997;Lauber and Rössler, 2007), due to the group-centered nature which is common among Asian populations (Chong et al, 2007;Papadopoulos, 2009;Abdullah and Brown, 2011). In addition, the patterns of stigma vary throughout Asia (Yamamoto et al, 1996;Ng, 1997;Kurihara et al, 2000;Yamada et al, 2001;Chiu et al, 2005) and even between East Asian countries of similar cultures (Kumakura et al, 1992;Hanzawa et al, 2009).…”

Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Psychotic Disorders

“…Social and cognitive disability in patients with primary psychotic disorders may increase their vulnerability to advertisements of the purported therapeutic benefits of CAM. Other factors such as gender and underlying belief systems are also likely to contribute to the use of CAM (Chiu et al, 2005). We therefore conducted a survey of ambulatory patients with schizophrenia and related primary psychotic disorders followed at an inner city psychiatric hospital in Toronto to determine the prevalence and attitudes toward the safety and benefits of CAM.…”