I've gathered some online material for you. For reasons of copyright,
I am posting just brief excerpts here; you may want to read some of
these articles in their entirety.
"In many non-Western cultures there are no names for certain mental
health problems common in the daily language of Western societies. An
example is depression. In Asian and Central/ South American medical
cultures there is no name for depression but it does not mean that
people there do not suffer from depression. Nevertheless, a client may
describe it as nervous or spirit possession or dreams about dead
relatives."
Heartland Alliance
http://www.heartland-alliance.org/MCSC/Mental%20Health/TREATMENT/Culture/Cultural-Issues/arisk.htm
"Study after study has shown that Asians underutilize mental health
services much more than other populations,...
While there are cultural attitudes that can be seen across the Asian
population, there are important differences between groups, according
to Deborah S. Lee, CSW, director of Asian American Mental Health
Services in New York City.
'For all Asian groups, there is a stigma attached to going to an
outsider to obtain treatment for mental health problems,' Ms. Lee
said. 'But depending on the group, the stigma is expressed
differently.'...
Ms. Lee finds that because the Korean community is very religious, her
Korean clients often confuse their hallucinations with spiritual
voices. 'Our Korean clients also rely very heavily on treating
themselves with medication. We have to educate them and their families
about the dangers of misusing drugs and the importance of
understanding that treatment for mental health problems involves more
than just medication."
HealthyPlace Depression Community
http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/depression/minorities_11.asp
"Korean Community...
Health is understood as a state of balance between positive (yang) and
negative (yin) energy...
Mental illness is stigmatized and kept secret."
Diversity in Health
http://www.diversityinhealth.com/regions/asia/korean.htm
"Underutilization of mental health services by ethnic minority groups
has been continuously reported, but little is known about why they do
not seek help from the current mental health service system for their
emotional problems. A qualitative methodology was chosen to explore
the complex experience of depression and help-seeking behaviors by
Korean immigrants... Participants conceptualized their depression as
self out-of-balance (disharmony between body, mind, and environment).
Most participants tended not to psychologize emotional conflicts, but
rather transformed them into bodily sensation. Despite labeling their
problem as depression, participants did not quickly seek treatment for
a 'mental heath problem' or from 'mental health providers'. Prolonged
family intervention, related to stigma, and extensive utilization of
primary care services and traditional Asian practices, led to a delay
in seeking mental health services. In addition, culturally
unresponsive mental health systems keep many Korean immigrants with
depression out of the delivery system."
American Public Health Association
http://apha.confex.com/apha/128am/techprogram/paper_18282.htm
"Our exploratory study is the first to compare the likelihood that
Koreans and Caucasian Americans may hold different values about what
constitutes good or poor mental health... The underuse by Koreans of
mental health services might be better explained by examining cultural
beliefs about the nature of healthy emotional functioning...
Findings. Notable differences between Koreans and Americans were
found on the MHVQ subscales of negative traits, achievement, affective
control, untrustworthiness, and unconventional reality. Female Korean
students perceived a stronger relationship with poor mental health on
the negative traits, untrustworthiness, and unconventional reality
scales than their American counterparts. Americans reported lower
scores on the achievement and affective control subscales than the
Korean students."
Society for Social Work and Research
http://www.sswr.org/papers2003/149.htm
"Even if Asian Americans are not at high risk for a few of the
psychiatric disorders that are common in the United States, they may
experience so-called culture-bound syndromes...
Koreans may experience hwa-byung, a culture-bound disorder with both
somatic and psychological symptoms. Hwa-byung, or 'suppressed anger
syndrome,' is characterized by sensations of constriction in the
chest, palpitations, sensations of heat, flushing, headache,
dysphoria, anxiety, irritability, and problems with concentration."
National Mental Health Information Center
http://www.mentalhealth.org/cre/ch5_need_for_mental_health_care.asp
"Koreans have described spiritual causes of illness if they do not
meet their spiritual being's expectation of them, whether they are
related to Christianity, animism, shamanism, or Confucianism. Some
were due to failure to pray, others to displeasure of ancestors with
their burial place or offenses displeasing folk spirits. A
particularly interesting cultural construction of illness found by
Pang (1991) was Hwabyung, literally translated as 'fire illness', and
related to a failure to keep their emotions from being expressed
openly as traditionally required, especially for women."
Stanford University
http://www.stanford.edu/group/ethnoger/korean.html
Google search strategy:
Google Web Search: "korean OR koreans" + "mental health" + "cultural"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=korean+OR+koreans+%22mental+health%22+cultural
I hope this information is helpful. If anything is unclear, or if a
link does not function, please request clarification; I'll gladly
offer further assistance before you rate my answer.
Best regards,
pinkfreud |
