Abstract
Ethnicity and culture profoundly influence people’s beliefs about mental illness, their experiences of psychiatric distress, and communication of distress. Conducting culturally valid assessments of Asian Americans’ cognitive, emotional, psychological, and social functioning is a major challenge that confronts both research and practice today. Mental health assessments with Asian Americans raise a number of intriguing questions. For example, how universal are the Big Five personality characteristics? Is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) system universally useful with members of various ethnic groups? Which diagnostic categories are relevant to Asian Americans, and what measurement instruments are available? How do we measure acculturation and ethnic identity of Asian Americans, and are such constructs best conceptualized as a unidimensional or multidimensional process? How do we develop linguistically appropriate measurement instruments?
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© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Kurasaki, K.S., Okazaki, S. (2002). Introduction. In: Kurasaki, K.S., Okazaki, S., Sue, S. (eds) Asian American Mental Health. International and Cultural Psychology Series. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0735-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0735-2_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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