Help-Seeking Stigma in Asian American College Women: the Role of Disordered Eating Cognitions and Psychological Inflexib
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Help-Seeking Stigma in Asian American College Women: the Role of Disordered Eating Cognitions and Psychological Inflexibility Akihiko Masuda 1 & Bradly L. Goodnight 2 & Stacey Y. Ng 2 & L. Ward Schaefer 2 & Erin C. Tully 2 & Wing Yi Chan 2 & Chad E. Drake 3
Published online: 7 March 2017 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017
Abstract Help-seeking stigma is considered a major obstacle to seeking professional psychological services in Asian American college women. Informed in part by objectification theory and the psychological flexibility model of behavior change, the present cross-sectional study examines the role of disordered eating cognition and psychological inflexibility in helpseeking stigma among a sample of Asian American college women (N = 257). More specifically, this study examined whether disordered eating cognitions and psychological inflexibility would mediate the association between psychological distress and stigma tolerance for seeking psychological services in this group. Results revealed that both greater disordered eating cognition and greater psychological inflexibility were associated with lower stigma tolerance, and each of them uniquely mediated the association between greater psychological distress and lower stigma tolerance. These findings suggest that disordered eating cognitions and avoidance-based coping and beliefs may contribute to help-seeking stigma and its association with psychological distress. Limitations of the study and the directions of future research are discussed. Keywords Asian American women . Disordered-eating cognitions . Psychological distress . Psychological flexibility . Stigma tolerance of seeking psychological services . Emotion regulation . Experiential avoidance
* Akihiko Masuda [email protected]
1
Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822-2294, USA
2
Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA
3
Department of Psychology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA
Int J Adv Counselling (2017) 39:188–201
189
Introduction Asian Americans, like other underserved groups, endorse less favorable attitudes toward seeking psychological services (Gilbert et al. 2007), and they seek psychological services less often than the general population (Abe-Kim et al. 2007). For example, Masuda et al. (2009) showed that, while 51.9% of White American college women had previous experience of seeking professional psychological services, only 8.5% of Asian American college women reported having such an experience. The same study also revealed that the Asian American group reported less tolerance for stigma associated with seeking professional psychological services and less interpersonal openness about psychological problems than the White American group. Despite these significant concerns, Asian American women are one of the least studied groups in the behavioral health and service utilization literature (Hall and Yee 2012; Smart and Tsong 2014). An initial step toward understanding and eventual
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