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Barriers such as language differences, cultural misunderstandings, and a lack of culturally competent providers lead to significant hurdles in accessing mental health care. In some cultures, openly discussing mental health is discouraged, considered taboo, or seen as a personal weakness. For instance, while Western cultures often emphasize medical diagnoses, many non-Western societies view mental illnesses through spiritual or communal lenses. For example, Asian cultures often exhibit a tendency for somatization, where psychological distress manifests as physical symptoms, which can mask underlying mental health issues. In some cultures, individuals may lean towards avoidance strategies, while others may seek collective support from family and community.

Inclusion of racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, and communities in treatments and research

As individuals navigate diverse cultural contexts, understanding the multidimensional effects of cultural identity on mental well-being becomes essential. Asian and Latinx college students exhibit similarly low rates of mental health help-seeking behaviors, yet little work has examined what value-based similarities both groups might share that may contribute to these behavioral outcomes. Next steps might focus on further parsing out the multifaceted experience of familism, taking a strength-based perspective in understanding when strong adherence to interdependent values may act as a buffer for mental health problems and the stresses unique to the university environment. Future studies might build upon our findings and examine interactions between cultural values and resource availability. Additionally, though the current work identified similarities in internal barriers to help-seeking behaviors across groups, we are in no way stating that structural barriers, such as diminished access to resources, or cost, are irrelevant to mental health behaviors in ethnic minority youth. For instance, research might probe whether greater adherence to Interdependent Orientation predicts negative mental health attitudes and mental health behaviors in other ethnic groups as well.

We note here the need for stronger causal inference methods to address these challenges in observational studies. One limitation of this approach is that the majority of the evidence we draw from – though by no means alle.g.,42 – comes from high‐income countries (HICs) in the Global North. Throughout, we cite the strongest quantitative evidence, where available, and acknowledge any gaps in knowledge. They affect people’s agency and autonomy by threat to life, livelihood and civil liberties, whether via experiences of interpersonal, institutional or systematic racism, or displacement through conflict and violence, political instability, or climate‐related events. They influence people’s economic precarity through impacts on employment, income, education, food and housing security. Honoring Indigenous peoples through education These patterns have been observed in several different countries34, 35, and extend to suicidal outcomes, particularly amongst girls34.

Culture, cultural factors and psychiatric diagnosis: review and projections

Nonetheless, later follow‐ups have found differential effects on adolescent mental health, including higher risk of conduct disorder, PTSD and depression in boys, and lower risk of conduct disorder in girls in the intervention arm376, 377, 378. Nonetheless, designing, testing and implementing interventions which seek to modify social or physical environments in order to improve public health is notoriously difficult. These programs often include aspects of social support for new parents, education about child development, informal training about positive parenting techniques (and avoidance of negative parenting behaviours), and facilitation of mother‐child interaction. Home visitation programs for pregnant or post‐partum mothers, their partners, and their children have often been delivered to selected populations at risk of experiencing considerable social disadvantage, adversity and negative health outcomes. As evidence has accumulated supporting the effects of perinatal stress on brain development367, public health practitioners have focused more attention on supporting healthy development early in life.

• Edge and MacKian (2010) also reported that patients who have had a negative encounter with MH service use are reluctant to return.
• Even though self-stigma is a stronger predictor of MH service use than public stigma, this review found public and self-stigma mitigating against MH service use among ethnic minority groups (Nam et al., 2013; Wu et al., 2017).
• We note that neither the retained AVS-R or LVS items separately were predictive of any outcomes of interest.
• IPS has been consistently demonstrated to be superior over other forms of vocational interventions to help individuals with severe mental illnesses obtain and maintain competitive employment413, 414, 415.
• This has resulted in a disproportionate burden of some mental health problems, in particular psychotic disorders.

By embracing cultural competence and sensitivity, the mental health field can break down barriers to care, reduce stigma, and enhance the well-being of diverse communities. This divergence in approaches can lead to disparities in how individuals report symptoms or seek treatment, often complicating their mental health journey in multicultural settings. Coping mechanisms vary across cultures, affecting how individuals manage mental health challenges.