Content area
Full Text
Introduction
Empirical studies of mental health services use by ethnic minority women are rare despite the recent growth of research on the mental health needs of subpopulations such as women and ethnic minorities. Specific attention to the needs of ethnic minority women was given by the Special Populations Subpanel on Women of the President's Commission on Mental Health report of 1978, which highlighted potential barriers arising from discrimination because of gender, ethnicity, and social class.(1) Soon after this report was issued, Olmedo and Parron(2) noted the absence of reliable, systematic national data on the epidemiology of mental disorders among ethnic minority women and on their use or nonuse of mental health services. Data that are presented are broken down either by ethnic group or by gender; the interaction of the two is seldom explored.(2)
Subsequent research during the 1980s, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)sponsored Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) surveys,(3-6) has produced a wealth of important national data but has done little to close this information gap. So far, several publications using the ECA data have reported prevalence rates of mental disorders or use of mental health services comparing Hispanics versus non-Hispanic whites,(7,8) blacks versus whites,(9) and men versus women.(10)
Several articles have addressed the special mental health needs of ethnic minority women in general(2,11) as well as the needs of black women,(12,13) Hispanic women,(14,15) and Asian women(16) in particular. A number of issues have been raised in these articles with respect to socioeconomic and cultural barriers to use of mental health services as well as the need to consider special circumstances of each group of women including English-language acquisition, immigration history, social isolation, family and gender role-related burdens, and cultural beliefs and values that may stigmatize women who seek formal mental health treatment.
The absence of empirical data severely limits understanding of help-seeking behavior of ethnic minority women and how it differs--if at all--from the behavior of their white nonminority counterparts. There is a particular gap in understanding how women who are members of ethnic minority groups use outpatient mental health services in both the public and private sectors. A few key questions underlie this study. Do women from various ethnic groups differ in their use of outpatient mental health services? If...