Abstract
This chapter examines the challenges that researchers face when estimating prevalence rates of psychiatric disorders among Asian Americans, and provides recommendations for designing and implementing culturally valid epidemiological research. Our present understanding of psychiatric prevalence rates, pathogenesis, and correlates of mental disorders among Asian Americans is woefully inadequate. Large scale epidemiological studies of mental disorders in this country (e.g., Kessler et al., 1994; Robins & Regier, 1991) have failed to include sufficient numbers of Asian Americans, limiting our ability to make meaningful comparisons of the rates of mental illness between Asian Americans and the general United States population. The magnitude of this problem is troubling. Our knowledge base has lagged far behind the population growth of Asian Americans. The Asian American population doubled in size between 1980 and 1990, and has grown by an average of 4.5 percent annually since 1990 (Hajime-Shinagawa, 1996). At this rate, by the year 2050, it is estimated that the Asian American population will have grown to five times its size in 1995 and will make up ten percent of the nation’s population (Hajime-Shinagawa, 1996). In order to improve our response to the treatment needs of this growing population of Americans, more, well-designed studies are needed to determine the rates and correlates of mental illness among Asian Americans.
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Kurasaki, K.S., Koike, A.K. (2002). Assessing Psychiatric Prevalence Rates Among Asian Americans. In: Kurasaki, K.S., Okazaki, S., Sue, S. (eds) Asian American Mental Health. International and Cultural Psychology Series. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0735-2_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0735-2_14
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