Asian American Mental Health Help-Seeking: An Asian Value-Informed Health Belief Model

Depression is a serious mental health concern that has increasing prevalence rates in the United States (Mojtabai et al., 2016). Asian Americans with depression tend to experience severe and persistent symptoms, but are significantly less likely to seek treatment than other racial/ethnic groups (Alegria et al., 2008; Lee et al., 2011). The current study utilized the Health Belief Model (HBM) to examine Asian American emerging adults’ depression-specific mental health beliefs and resulting intentions to seek mental health care. Furthermore, the current study tested the traditional HBM against an Asian value-informed HBM via structural equation modeling among a sample of 385 Asian American emerging adults (Mage = 21.81, SDage = 2.88). Primary study results indicated good model fit for both the traditional and Asian-value informed HBMs. Specifically, in the Asian-value informed HBM, perceived benefits of professional mental health care mediated the association between Asian value adherence and likelihood of mental health help-seeking. Post hoc analyses provided support for the Asian value-informed HBM over the traditional HBM. These results suggest that Asian cultural values influence mental health beliefs and, in turn, the likelihood of mental health help-seeking behaviors among Asian Americans. The results of the current study have important implications for practice as well as future research in highlighting the impact of cultural variables on mental health beliefs and behaviors among Asian American emerging adults.