Chinese students' views of mental health and their relation to coping strategies, well-being, and acculturation

The present research assessed the correlation among Chinese international students' views of mental health, coping behavior, subjective well-being, and acculturation level. Data analysis was performed on 104 Chinese international students and 108 Caucasian American students from a Midwest university. The two groups were equivalent in age, class level, and college affiliation.;Four questionnaires were sent to the Chinese international students including the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale (SL-ASIA; Suinn, Rickard-Figueroa, Lew, & Vigil, 1987), assessing self-identity acculturation of Asians; a revised Mental Health Beliefs Scale (Nunnally, 1961), assessing subjects' views of mental health; the COPE scale (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989), assessing coping strategies; and the General Well-Being Schedule (GWB; Fazio, 1977), assessing subjective well-being. The last three questionnaires were sent to the American students.;Analyses of variance and discriminant analysis showed that the two groups were significantly different from each other on the set of mental health beliefs and on the set of coping strategies, but not on well-being. More so than American students, Chinese students believed that mental health was maintained by entertaining pleasant thoughts, having social and family guidance and support, exercising will power, and avoiding morbid thoughts, and that mental illness was organically based. Chinese students, more frequently than American students, adopted the strategies of denial and behavioral disengagement. More frequently than Chinese students, American students reportedly coped by relying on alcohol/drugs, religion, and humor.;Based on multiple regression analyses, the relationships between acculturation and mental health beliefs, coping strategies, and well-being were non-significant, which may be due to the low variance among the Chinese students' acculturation levels. Also based on multiple regression analyses, the relationships between the set of coping strategies and each mental health belief were all significant except for the Organically Based mental health belief for the American subjects. These relationships seemed to be logical and culturally appropriate. The differences between the two groups in mental health beliefs and coping strategies, despite their similarity in well-being, implied the need to modify Western-based psychotherapeutic interventions and interpretations of coping strategies to meet the needs of Chinese international students.