A cross -cultural investigation of Hispanic American attitudes toward mental illness and factors influencing help -seeking behaviors

This study (N = 200) was designed to investigate from a cross-cultural perspective the idea of acculturation, family ties, religion, and other related factors influencing help-seeking behaviors and the effects they have on Hispanic American attitudes toward mental illness. The attitudes of 200 Hispanic participants were assessed using three self-administered protocols consisting of a demographic questionnaire developed by the writer, the opinions About Mental Illness Scale, referred to as the OMI (Cohen & Struening, 1962), and the Biculturalism Involvement Scale (Szapocznik, Scopetta, Kurtines, & Aranalde, 1978).;The statistical analysis employed was a combined correlational and quasi-experimental design. The quasi-experimental portion of the study used the Social Restrictiveness subscale from the OMI as the dependent variable and the Acculturation Group derived from the Bicultural Involvement Scale as the independent variable. Demographic variables of importance to this analysis were family ties, religion, education, and age.;Results of the study suggest that there was a strong relationship between the respondents' willingness to seek counseling/therapy and their religious beliefs (r = .51, p < .001). There was a modest relationship between family ties and mental hygiene ideology ( r = .22, p < .01). However, there was no relationship found between respondents' age and authoritarianism (r = -.04, p > .05) or between age and social restrictiveness (r = .06, p > .05).;Additionally, an analysis of variance, a priori contrasts, descriptives, and multiple comparisons were conducted with the Bicultural Involvement Scale to determine the level of acculturation in respect to Americanism, Hispanicism, Biculturalism, and one's level of cultural involvement. There was a difference found in social restrictiveness among the three acculturation groups, F(2, 197) = 4.66, p < .05. There was no difference, however, in social restrictiveness with the a priori contrast comparing the Americanized respondents against the combined set of Bicultural and Hispanicized respondents t(197) = .88, p > .05. Fifty-six percent (n = 112) of the participants were identified as American monoculturalist, 36% (n = 72) Bicultural, and 8% (n = 16) were Hispanic monoculturalist. The implications and limitations of the study are addressed, and suggestions for further research are discussed.