TY - JOUR PY - 2022// TI - Parental socialization of mental health in Chinese American families: what parents say and do, and how youth make meaning JO - Family Process A1 - Yasui, Miwa A1 - Choi, Yoonsun A1 - Chin, Marshall A1 - Miranda Samuels, Gina A1 - Kim, Karen A1 - Victorson, David SP - ePub EP - ePub VL - ePub IS - ePub N2 - Parental mental health socialization is a process by which parents shape how youth develop and maintain beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors regarding mental health and help-seeking behaviors. Although culture shapes parental mental health socialization, few studies have examined specific parental socialization practices regarding mental health and help-seeking, especially as a culturally anchored process. Using a qualitative approach, this study explores youth-reported parental socialization of mental health within Chinese American families by examining focus group data from 69 Chinese American high school and college students.

FINDINGS revealed that youth received parental messages that conveyed culturally anchored conceptualizations of mental health that included stigmatized views of mental illness and perceptions of mental distress as not a legitimate problem. Parents responded to youth distress in culturally consonant ways: by encouraging culturally specific coping methods, dismissing or minimizing distress, or responding with silence. Youth engaged in the active interpretation of parental messages through cultural brokering, bridging the gap between their parents' messages and mainstream notions of mental health and help-seeking. Overall, our findings point to the significant role of culture in parental mental health socialization in Chinese American families and the need to integrate culturally specific understandings of mental health into future interventions for Asian American youth.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0014-7370 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/famp.12766 ID - ref1 ER -