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Challenges in Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Urban Asian American Adolescents: Service Providers’ Perspectives

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Abstract

Although Asian American youth are often viewed as the model minority group who are doing well, research with youths, parents, and school personnel have documented significant unmet mental health needs among this population. However, little is known about the perspectives of service providers who work with Asian American youth in afterschool and mental health care settings with respect to what they perceive as challenges meeting the psychosocial needs of the population. The current exploratory study used Consensual Qualitative Research to analyze in-depth interviews with mental health providers, educators, and advocates working with Asian American youths in a multiethnic large urban environment. Results found that service providers were attuned to the multiple needs of the community but also spoke of challenges in meeting basic and psychological needs due to difficult family dynamics, structural stressors (e.g., economic and legal), and societal stigma and discrimination. We draw implications for providing more integrated services across different levels of urban Asian American adolescents’ ecological system to better meet the psychosocial challenges facing this population.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the New York University Research Challenge Fund and the New York University Steinhardt Faculty Challenge Fund awarded to the second author. We thank the high school student members of Project Asian American Wellness and Research Education (AWARE), a community-based participatory research project at New York University who helped to design, collect, and analyze the data: Bernice Chan, Kevin Chiu, Windy Han, Eric Mei, Celia Peng, Kevin Wu, and Belinda Zhou. We also thank Danny Wong, Annie Lee, and Samuel Lee for their work preparing the data and the service providers in the community who took the time to share their experiences and knowledge through the interviews.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Ariane Ling, Sumie Okazaki & Ming-Che Tu

  2. University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Joanna J. Kim

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  1. Ariane Ling
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  2. Sumie Okazaki
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  3. Ming-Che Tu
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  4. Joanna J. Kim
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Correspondence to Ariane Ling.

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Ling, A., Okazaki, S., Tu, MC. et al. Challenges in Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Urban Asian American Adolescents: Service Providers’ Perspectives. Race Soc Probl 6, 25–37 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-014-9117-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-014-9117-2

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