Ethnic Minority Groups and Mental Health
Issues regarding mental health dramatically affect our society. Unfortunately, marginalized social groups often fall prey to a deficit in treatment options. Ethnic minority groups are dramatically distressed with various social and socioeconomic factors to increase the presence of mental illness. Minority adults are significantly less likely to seek mental health care than adults identifying as two or more races and Whites (Morris, 2015). Different theories touch on different perspective views of mental illness and minorities.
Functionalist theory encourages availability of mental health resources. These resources allow society to progress competently without complications. Symbolic Interactionism theory enables society to merely observe mental illness as a condition. One that characterizes mental sickness will be noted as sick. Conflict theory characterizes one’s ability to seek
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Conflict theory is most appropriate for examining this issue and developing a solution to promote the equality for ethical minorities. Both psychopathology/substance misuse and limited resource availability has hindered the group in seeking proper mental illness treatment (Waheed, Hughes-Morley, Woodham, Allen, & Bower, 2015). There has been an increase in mental health promotion to ethnical minority groups in recent years. Barriers must be addressed within marginalized groups such as those in the ethnic minority categorization (Priebe, Matanov, Barros, Canavan, Gabor, Greacen, & Gaddini, 2013). Minority mental health clients have been noted to seek a cultural element within their plan of care. However, many clients did not perceive their culture to be present in treatment and were less likely to return (Meyer & Zane, 2013). Cultural perspective is relayed through community and the agencies which serve
One of the most promising approaches to the field of multicultural counseling/therapy has been the work on racial/cultural identity development among minority groups. This model acknowledges within groups differences that have implications for treatment. The high failure-to-return rate of many clients seems to be intimately connected to the mental health professional’s inability to assess the cultural identity of clients accurately. The model also acknowledges
Statistics state that mental illness is estimated to be higher in blacks than in whites. One of the contributing factors to why blacks aren’t being cared for when they have a mental illness is because of the stigma that mental illness doesn’t exist within the community. According to Plowden (2006), “ African American men often differ in their presentation of depression and are often misdiagnosed. African American men are at greater risk for depression, but they are less likely to participate in mental health care.” This is due to the
This article is a great article that relates to African Americans seeking mental health treatment at lower rates than whites. The article states that this disparity can be attributed to attitudes toward services, alternate coping, and differences in care. This article also illuminates biases in counseling.
Health care for mental illness is an issue in the African American community for Men, Women and Adolescents due to the underserving and lack of mental healthcare providers, the cultural stigma of having mental illness and
Across the country, a steady increase has been noted in the number of patients presenting to emergency departments for psychiatric complaints (Zun, 2014). Patients also attempt to use their primary care doctors to treat their mental illnesses. The mental health care options for these patients are extremely limited, especially for minority populations such as African Americans and Hispanics. One out of four adults in America suffers from some form of mental illness, yet only one out of three of those affected receives treatment (Safran, 2009). Furthermore, patients are routinely misdiagnosed, receive poor quality of care, receive care from providers who have no understanding of their cultures and values, or are not even able to receive care in the first place (Sanchez, 2012).
Structural functionalism is the school of thought that will be used to explain the topic of mental illness and race. Structural functionalisms the belief that social structures or systems are put in place in order to serve society and its people. It focuses on the relationships between social institutions and how they come together to make up society. In the past people did not understand mental illnesses so their solution was to put everyone suffering from a mental illness into asylums so no attention would be payed to them, treatments in these asylums included purging, bloodletting, blistering, dousing patients in either boiling or ice-cold water to try to cure them. In today’s time more and more people are starting to understand how they
According to the popular media report issued by CNN, latinos in general, have been struggling to find help for mental health issues amongst their ever growing population (Rodriguez, 2013). Even though Obamacare ensures affordable healthcare for 6 million latinos, it’s still not enough for the hispanic community who are suffering from mental illness to seek help (Rodriguez, 2013). The major fear in the latino community is the fact of being stigmatized when obtaining help from mental institutions and services (Rodriguez, 2013). Therefore, many community members refuse to seek help and the mental illnesses go unnoticed. And even when the mental illness are acknowledged, latinos are known for asking extended family members, the community, church leaders, and spiritual healers for help and treatment instead of admitting themselves at hospitals (Rodriguez, 2013). Many latinos feel apprehensive towards mental illnesses and therefore, searching for help seems like such a taboo in the community. Moreover, according to the National Resource Center for Hispanic Mental Health, Hispanics are a high-risk group for depression, substance abuse and anxiety. About 1 in every 7 Latinos has attempted suicide (Rodriguez, 2013). Therefore, this puts them more at risk because of the lack of efficient treatment and care for people suffering with mental illnesses in their community especially in this generation. Furthemore, many elderly Latinos in the population find this acculturation overwhelming
Latino culture sees mental illness as weakness (Abdullah & Brown, 2001). This becomes a barrier since Latinos fear the stigma associated with mental health treatment (Vega, Rodriguez and Ang, 2010). According to Dr balbaskdjfdks, “Latinos usually seek help when the problem has reached a head and feel they have no other choice.” (personal communication). She also reported that “Latinos face many barriers to seeking mental health services. They fear the stigma associated with going to a mental health provider. They lack the insurance to get treatment. They also lack the knowledge for seeking mental health treatment.” (personal communication) According to one study, the most commonly reported barriers were lack of awareness of available mental health services, lack of knowledge, and lack of awareness of location of services (Aguilar-Gaxiola, Zelexny, Garcia, Edmondson, Alejo-Garcia, & Vega, 2002). According to the same study 58% of participants did not know where to obtain mental health services. Research shows that a key factor in seeking treatment is knowledge of where to find it (Ortega and Alegria,
As discussed in class, little advancement has been made in the field of mental health care over the past two decades. Rates of mental illness continue to be high especially among certain subgroups, but progress has been stunted by stigma and social environmental issues. Mental health disparities, like many other health disparities, are embedded within a trend of socioeconomic differences (Miranda, McGuire, Williams, & Wang, 2008). Racial and class disparities exist among those afflicted
Racial and ethnic disparities can be a touchy subject when talking among many circle of people, even so with some Caucasian sub-group.US Census reported that 1 in 4 Americans are of a race other than white; 1 in 3 children are African American, Hispanic, or Asian; and 1 in 10 people are of foreign-born. When majority dictated make all decisions and the minorities does not have any power. This cultural diversity can have inferences with our health care. Ethnic culture affects our beliefs, health, illness, and medications, as well as how we interact with our healthcare providers, and even how we comply with our prescribed medications, as well as mental health status (Cultural diversity and Medication Safety , 2003).
Cultural competence is a widely used term in the social work field that calls mental health practitioners to acknowledge client individuality. This entails an intentional recognition and response to cultural concerns of each individual, including their histories, traditions, beliefs, and value systems (United States, 1999). Despite this call to acknowledge these important differences, the mental health field has largely failed to provide culturally competent care. In particular, the U.S. mental health system is not well equipped to meet the diverse needs of minority ethnic and racial groups (United States, 1999). It is noted that a wide variety of barriers exist to deter members of these particular groups from seeking mental health care.
Ethnicity is having distinctive cultural characteristics in distinction to race which people refer to biological characteristics that distinguish one group of from another. The type of roles played are people with unequal treatment and discern considered to be minority groups. The dominant groups has an advantage of power and being privilege. Progression in political power and cohesive by allocated physical and cultural traits. The dominating groups uses its position to discriminate against those with different supposedly inferior traits. How a group develops being a minorities is by one or two ways. Either through expansion of political boundaries or by cultural, same language, or belonging to the same group. Minority groups and dominant
We live in a country plagued by social injustices towards minorities. In countless ways and to varying standards this erodes the well-being of our society. These social issues caused a fascist, racist, sexist, homophobic, islamophobic, ignorant man to become elected and represent our country. The potential solutions for all these injustices primarily involve education for both those in the majority as well as the minority groups. These issues cannot be solved all at once and will take time. The proposed solutions to them all are varied and diverse. Although a majority involve education and open communication between leaders of each community and the citizens of all sides. The solution would involve giving minorities greater opportunity,
First of all a minority group is a group of people defined by ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disable people, and political minorities. Who exist side by side to the dominant or majority group but have unequal treat and less power over their lives. The ethnic minority group have different language, style of life, race, different cultural tradition that makes them stand out from the rest. The religious group is within our own society it does not have to be necessarily from a different country, they are a group of people with a strong believe in their religion. Sometimes they are such strong believer or their religion that want everyone else believe in the same thing they do. The gender group we still see it in our society, they are a group
Rees, Wohland, Norman, Lomax, and Clark (2017) argue that it is important to project ethnic minorities for the future mix of populations with different national and cultural backgrounds. Histogram 1 (see Appendix) shows that 13% of the UK population are from ethnic minority background, which apparently means that it is one of the most ethnically diverse