Understanding Korean Americans’ Mental Health: A Guide to Culturally Competent Practices, Program Developments, and Policies

At nearly 1.9 million, the Korean American community is one of the major Asian ethnic subgroups in the United States. Though considered among one of the model minority groups, excelling academically and professionally, members in this community are plagued by unaddressed mental health obstacles. In Understanding Korean Americans’ Mental Health: A Guide to Culturally Competent Practices, Program Developments, and Policies, the editors, Anderson Sungmin Yoon, Sung Seek Moon, and Haein Son, examine a variety of mental health issues in the Korean American community, including depression, anxiety, suicide, substance abuse, and trauma, and convincingly connect these challenges to cultural stigma and racial prejudice.

The editors argue that this population and its mental health needs are, to varying degrees, neglected by current approaches in mainstream mental health services. Alarmingly, the very cultural values and attitudes that help make up the Korean American community are contributing to its members’ reluctance to seek care, counting both familial and communal shame among the most pressing culprits. This book supports these claims with statistical realities and seeks to gather the relatively scarce research that does exist on this topic to underscore the heightened prevalence of mental health issues and related symptoms among Korean Americans, and the contributors make recommendations for more culturally competent practices, program developments, and policies.