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Introduction
In the recent past, mental health-related illnesses have become rampant in the United States, mainly affecting the Asian American and immigrant communities. Several factors attributed to these insurgencies include racial discrimination, difficulty sustaining a bicultural lifestyle, pressure to prosper academically, and the struggle to integrate into the American culture successfully. Besides, there are challenges within these communities that affect the implementation of mental health services. This essay will delve into the findings of the study conducted among the Asian American community on mental health matters. Patients, service providers, system-related barriers, and psychiatry culture affect the delivery of mental health services.
Discussion
The patient-related barriers include the stigma associated with mental illness and financial difficulties in seeking professional assistance. Asian American communities with mental illness felt ashamed, stigmatized, and had no intention of burdening others; these discouraged them from seeking help. Despite research showing that stigma contributed to poor help-seeking behavior, these communities did not embrace mental health treatment as the whites did. Families hid any mental illness-related cases to save their dignity since the community considered them shameful (Yang et al., 2019). Financial and insurance challenges affected the Asian American communities since they could not afford mental treatment services (Cook et al., 2017). These communities were poor, with no reliable source of income to substantially cater to their basic needs and medical care.
Other patient-related barriers included mistrust of mental health, difficulty asking for assistance, and taking a mental health provider as a last resort. Asian Americans had difficulty opening up about their mental illness or seeking the services of mental health providers; they opted for their traditional medicine, which they believed could cure them. They only went to seek professional services as their last hope after witch doctors failed attempted treatment (Wu et al., 2018). Asian Americans perceived psychological distress as a normal illness that they sought treatment for; they did not bother to inquire more about what might be the course of such illnesses. They also perceived that the Western doctors charged more for consultation and treatment, which barred them from asking for help, thinking they would not afford or get assisted (Yang et al., 2019).
Service provider-related barriers included lack of skills, cultural assumptions, and the unwillingness of Asian Americans to open up. Proper training skills were required in a unique environment with different cultural backgrounds, beliefs, and understanding. Tolerance, patience, and optimism are other basic traits that a mental health worker has acquired. This helped in handling people with different temperaments, the decree of mental illness, and those with communication challenges due to the language barrier (Rathod et al., 2018). Mental health workers also developed culturally adapted interventions to ensure they achieved their objectives as individuals and as an institution.
System barriers include changing financial systems, responsibilities, and primary care access points for patients with mental disorders. Changes in the routine system of operations significantly affect the delivery of mental health services. Change of responsibilities leads to an automatic change in the flow of finances that may give rise to a conflict of interest, thus affecting service delivery. Some changes are inevitable but must be harmoniously effected to ensure cohesion within the team despite the changes (Zubatsky & Brieler, 2018). All these changes are made for the benefit of the clients who come to seek services.
Transitioning from one medical specialist to another is a bit challenging. This is because of their difference in terms of operation and services. These changes are accompanied by different information from one specialist to another since they all view and handle things from different perspectives. Patients must not have negative experiences with the difference in transition in hospital departments; they must be attended to effectively and on time (Owens et al., 2017). This will enhance synchronization in the hospitals different departments and thus deliver fast and reliable service.
Another barrier to implementing mental health services is the eventualities during the treatment process. A mental health worker is not responsible for other conditions in the body but may take the blame. On the other hand, they may identify another condition that needs medical attention, but the patient may see it from the aspect of being fleeced (Ma et al., 2018). Such cases present a dilemma that the physician must interrogate keenly before deciding to help the patient and not take the blame.
Currently, the common barrier to implementing mental health services is patient-related. Cases of stigma against people with mental illness are still rampant, preventing people from coming out to seek help or assessment. People with some unique experiences do not have the confidence that they can get assistance and therefore resort to keeping the burden to themselves. Similarly, service-related barriers are still a common challenge today. Some mental health service providers are incompetent and ineffective; they lack relevant skills in attending to their clients professionally.
The recommendations to address the current barriers mentioned above are to carry out public awareness campaigns on mental health and continuous training of mental health workers. Stakeholders should carry out a vigorous public awareness that being mentally unstable is normal for human beings. They should make the public understand that mental illness is real but treatable. People living with this condition must be treated with dignity and not stigmatized. On the other hand, mental health workers should be regularly trained on the proper ways to treat their clients with passion and commitment. Sometimes, people with mental health conditions are difficult to attend to, but the healthcare workers should not handle them with emotions; they should receive training to control themselves. This will build trust in the profession and encourage people to come out and seek relevant psychological help.
The recommendations above will not perfectly work without involving people from the communities of interest or understanding their culture. Collaborating with someone who understands the communities culture and values is important. This person will help the participants in the exercise to understand and integrate into the local culture. It will be easy to adapt to and value the diversity of different cultures and thus aid in creating awareness by delivering information most acceptably (Lee et al., 2016). In addition, this person will be instrumental in providing a guide on how to provide services in a culturally acceptable manner during the regular training of mental health workers.
Conclusion
In my community, people perceive mental illness as Asian Americans do; no one takes it as seriously as it should be. Understanding my culture and its values well has enabled me to find a friendly and appropriate means to reach out to the people of my community and educate them on mental health matters. While interpreting the focus group data, I had to bring in the key aspect of culture and its influence on such research activities; this significantly contributed to my understanding and analysis. The specific cultural knowledge I require to conduct culturally sensitive research with this group successfully is easily understanding and integrating into new cultures and understanding and valuing diversity. These will make it easy to interact with the target community and get the information I need.
References
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Lee, M. Y., Wang, X., Cao, Y., Zaharlick, A., & Liu, C. (2016). Creating a culturally competent research agenda. In Strategies for Deconstructing Racism in the Health and Human Services, 5559. Essay, Oxford University Press.
Ma, L., Zhang, Z., & Zhang, N. (2018). Ethical dilemma of artificial intelligence and its research progress. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 362(6).
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Owens, K., Eggers, J., Keller, S., & McDonald, A. (2017). The imperative of culture: A quantitative analysis of the impact of culture on workforce engagement, patient experience, physician engagement, value-based purchasing, and turnover. Journal of Healthcare Leadership, 9, 25-31. Web.
Rathod, S., Gega, L., Degnan, A., Pikard, J., Khan, T., Husain, N., Munshi T., & Naeem, F. (2018). The current status of culturally adapted mental health interventions: A practice-focused review of meta-analyses. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 14, 165-178. Web.
Wu, C., Chiang, M., Harrington, A., Kim, S., Ziedonis, D., & Fan, X. (2018). Racial disparity in mental disorder diagnosis and treatment between non-hispanic white and Asian American patients in a general hospital. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 34, 78-83. Web.
Zubatsky, M., & Brieler, J. (2018). A health systems genogram for improving hospital transitions to primary care. The Annals of Family Medicine, 16(6), 566.
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