Understanding Arab American Mental Health Stigma to Establish Stigma-Reduction Initiatives (original) (raw)
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Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 2019
Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) individuals may have heightened risk for developing mental health problems due to unique cultural stressors. However, traditional cultural and religious practices and beliefs socialised within the family environment may reduce the likelihood of seeking mental health services. This qualitative study aimed to better understand the intersection of cultural, religious, and mental health attitudes among MENA individuals. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with MENA adults who had received therapy services (N = 13) and were analysed for emergent themes. Respondents reported lack of understanding of mental illness within their communities, and prominent levels of perceived and self-stigma. Families and religious practices/beliefs played an important role in responding to mental illness. Results suggest that incorporating psychoeducation and community awareness campaigns alongside religious services may help to reduce barriers to receiving mental health treatment.
Journal of Mental Disorders and Treatment, 2018
Objective: The present study was based on the Multicultural Assessment-Intervention Process (MAIP) framework and examined the effects of acculturation, ethnic identity, and spirituality on Arab American mental health service utilization attitudes. Methods: Based on a convenience sample of 298 Arab American adults, a structural model was configured with ethnic identity directly predicting both Heritage and Mainstream Acculturation. Each of these was proposed to both directly predict the willingness to seek psychological services as well as indirectly through spirituality. Results: The results showed that greater levels of ethnic identity were associated with more acculturation for both the heritage and mainstream domains. In turn, greater levels of both heritage and mainstream acculturation stategies were predictive of higher levels of individuals being more receptive to seeking psychological help. However, spirituality did not appear to be related to the willingness to seek psychological services. Conclusions: It appeared that Arab American mental health help-seeking attitudes were predicted by ethnocultural variables as generally described by the MAIP model. Implications for future Arab American research were discussed. will first utilize a variety of community ethnic Arab traditional healing resources prior to seeking help from the behavioral healthcare system [6]. Arab American traditional healers tend to take an active personal role in guiding, instructing, and suggesting courses of action, including engagement of family authorities as opposed to more formalized and detached mental health treatment [7]. Several advantages of traditional healing systems over formal behavioral health services include: nonstigmatizing cultural practices, management of counter-transference issues, community and familial collaborations, and using culturally based idioms of distress [6]. Challenges to traditional healing methods are that many of these religious leaders may not be qualified or sufficiently knowledgeable to provide mental health services [6]. Recent empirical evidences [8] suggest that both Christian and Muslim Arab Americans prefer religious leaders to mainstream community mental health services. Challenges to Arab American help-seeking processes include Arab social norms concerning family orientation and fatalism, and views about mental health social stigma and disclosure. For example, Arab American families often provide a form of collective social support and may even serve as a proxy for professional intervention services [6] Mental health help-seeking may also be influenced by a religious
Common Mental Disorders Among Arab-Israelis: Findings from the Israel National Health Survey
Objectives: Psychiatric epidemiological data on Arab populations are generally scanty. This communitybased survey, a component of the World Health Organization's 27-country study, explored the prevalence rates of anxiety and mood disorders, emotional distress and help-seeking practices among Arab-Israelis, and compared them with those found among Jewish-Israelis. Methods: Close to 5,000 non-institutionalized individuals were interviewed with the WHO/Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) to determine the prevalence rates of selected psychiatric diagnoses, and with the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) to measure emotional distress. The schedule included other items, e.g., socio-demographic variables and help-seeking practices. Results: Arab-Israelis, in contrast to Jewish-Israelis, had higher mean GHQ-12 scores and lower self-appraisal of mental health. Twelve-month prevalence rates for any anxiety or affective disorder were not significantly higher among Arab-Israelis. Among respondents with diagnosed disorders, rates of help-seeking from specialized health services were lower among Arab-Israelis than among Jewish-Israelis. Intention to consult was elicited from both groups when the disorders were accompanied by higher distress scores. Conclusions: Despite major health gains, the social stresses impacting the Arab-Israeli minority may explain both the higher emotional distress and lower self-appraisal of mental health. However, no impact was observed of social causation factors on the rates of common mental disorders in the Arab-Israeli group. Cultural factors, including the definition of disorders and stigma and a lesser availability of culturally-tailored services, could account for the marked treatment gap.
2008
Somatic or psychological symptoms of depression and the ability of health professionals to detect it in ethnic minorities vary worldwide. Histories of trauma and stress exposure have been linked to depression in both African Americans and Arab Americans and may account for some of the variance in depression that is typically observed within and across primary care settings in urban communities. The Arab American population is growing because of war and political unrest in the Middle East. At least 3.5 million Arabic-speaking people, including Chaldeans, reside in the United States, and 490,000 Arab Americans live in Michigan alone. As the Arab American population grows, we need to better comprehend the epidemiology of common medical conditions affecting immigrants, such as depression, so that culturally appropriate interventions can be designed and implemented. In the Arab world, depression has been historically stigmatized. Persons suffering from depression relied on those in their...
BMC Public Health
Background Determining the potential barriers responsible for delaying access to care, and elucidating pathways to early intervention should be a priority, especially in Arab countries where mental health resources are limited. To the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have examined the relationship between religiosity, stigma and help-seeking in an Arab Muslim cultural background. Hence, we propose in the present study to test the moderating role of stigma toward mental illness in the relationship between religiosity and help-seeking attitudes among Muslim community people living in different Arab countries. Method The current survey is part of a large-scale multinational collaborative project (StIgma of Mental Problems in Arab CounTries [The IMPACT Project]). We carried-out a web-based cross-sectional, and multi-country study between June and November 2021. The final sample comprised 9782 Arab Muslim participants (mean age 29.67 ± 10.80 years, 77.1% females). Results Bivar...
International Journal of Culture and Mental Health, 2018
The current study examined a mediation model of help-seeking stigma towards group therapy in a community sample of clinical and nonclinical Arabs adults in Israel (n = 196). Path analyses indicated that public stigma demonstrated an indirect effect with intentions to seek group therapy through self-stigma, and self-stigma demonstrated a direct relationship with intentions. The strengths of these paths did not differ based on gender or clinical/non-clinical presentation. Examination of differences in public stigma, self-stigma and intentions based on gender and mental health group (clinical/non-clinical) revealed a significant interaction between mental health group and gender. Clinical males demonstrated greater public stigma, self-stigma and intentions compared with non-clinical males. Clinical women demonstrated reported self-stigma, but there were no differences in public stigma or intentions based on mental health group. Among non-clinical participants, women reported lower public stigma and intentions than men, but there were no gender differences observed among clinical participants. These findings build upon group therapy research that has examined help-seeking stigma in samples of non-Israeli Arabs, samples of predominantly Jewish Israeli participants and/or undergraduate students. Implications for future research are discussed.
Archives of Women's Mental Health, 2023
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