| English speaking African Caribbean immigrants, is among one of the fastest growing segments of the American population, yet little is known about their attitudes toward mental health care. In the mental health literature in the U.S., typically all persons of African descent are treated as an ethnically homogenous group. In this study, social support, stigma, attribution about mental illness and psychological distress were used to predict attitude towards seeking psychological help among a sample of 1st generation Jamaican immigrants (N = 115) in two boroughs of New York City. Participants were administered a structured questionnaire focused on demographics, the Help seeking Attitude scale, the Social Support Appraisal scale, the Social Support Behavior scale, the Attribution and Control scale, the Stigma scale and the General Health Questionnaire. Social Support, Eco-cultural and Attribution approaches offered a coherent conceptualization of the help seeking process. Descriptives, correlations and multiple regressions were used to analyze the data. The findings indicate that females had a more positive attitude than males toward seeking psychological help. Positive social support behaviors, psychological distress and the interaction of attribution about mental illness and stigma were significant predictors of attitude towards seeking professional psychological help. Additionally, more women in the study indicated their religion was an important source of support to them than was reported by men. Over 80% of the study participants attributed mental illness to external variables such as too much stress, using drugs, studying too much, or living in a bad neighborhood. Limitations of this study, as well as implications and recommendations for future research and practice are discussed. |
