Home
Resource
Millennial Iranian American beliefs about mental health and treatment: a qualitative study
PDF
PDF format is widely accepted and good for printing.
Plug-in required
PDF-1(3.65 MB)
Citation & Export
View Usage Statistics
Staff View

Citation & Export
Hide

Simple citation

Rouzitalab, Sheila. Millennial Iranian American beliefs about mental health and treatment: a qualitative study. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-2535-we37

Export

Click here for information about Citation Management Tools at Rutgers.

Statistics
Hide

Description

TitleMillennial Iranian American beliefs about mental health and treatment: a qualitative study
NameRouzitalab, Sheila (author); Kelly, Shalonda (chair); Diaz-Martinez, Angelica M. (member); Rutgers University; Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology
Date Created2022
Other Date2022-08 (degree)
SubjectPsychology, Middle Eastern studies, Iranian Americans -- Mental health -- Attitudes
Extent108 pages
DescriptionThis study explored millennial Iranian Americans’ attitudes about mental illness and treatment-seeking as well as their perceptions of community beliefs and attitudes. This study centered on five questions: 1) How do millennial Iranian Americans view mental health and treatment-seeking? 2) What are the similarities and differences in beliefs about mental illness and treatment-seeking between millennial Iranian Americans and generations before them? 3) What does this population perceive to be common stressors within their ethnocultural community that could negatively impact mental health? 4) What are accepted ways in which millennial Iranian Americans cope and seek support for emotional difficulties? 5) What solutions does this population believe would improve the mental health outcomes of their ethnocultural community? Fourteen millennial Iranian Americans were interviewed using a semi-structured interview protocol. The author analyzed the interviews using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six phases of thematic analysis and found themes across the data. The themes outlined that millennial Iranian Americans view mental health as overall well-being, that they have empathy towards people with mental illness (PWMI) and are largely open to seeking professional mental health treatment (i.e., therapy and psychotropic medication). Millennial Iranian Americans highlighted that their generation tends to be more open about mental health and treatment than generations before them, and that their parents were becoming more open over time. Despite this, the Iranian American diaspora at large was still said to perpetuate stigmatizing views of people with mental illness, including beliefs that PWMI are crazy, weak, and responsible for their mental illness. Negative implications of this stigma included anticipated stigma among the general population, resulting in fear of judgment for having a mental illness or engaging in treatment, secrecy or denial about mental illness and treatment, and delaying or avoiding treatment altogether. Common stressors identified in the community were the importance of appearance and status, and immigration history and acculturative stress. Social support was a key form of coping, and public discourse and education about mental health were recommended to reduce stigma and increase treatment-seeking. Study limitations, implications, and future directions are also discussed.
NotePsy.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-2535-we37
LanguageEnglish
CollectionGraduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
Version 8.5.5
Rutgers University Libraries - Copyright ©2024