GLAS Colloquium Series: Mental Health Services for Asian American Youth

This talk will present an overview of Asian American youth mental health and engagement in mental health services, followed by an ecologically based, public health mental health service model that has the potential to address disparities in mental health care for Asian American youth.

Generally, almost 20% of U.S. children have an identified mental health disorder and, of those, up to 50% do not receive any services (Merikangas et al., 2011 ). The mental health system remains largely inaccessible to many children and families, with ethnic and racial minority children facing large and persistent disparities (Aratani & Cooper, 2012; Young & Rabiner, 2015). As with many ethnic minority populations, Asian American youth are underserved within the mental health system due to practical, systemic and cultural barriers (see Gudino, Lau, Yeh, McCabe, & Hough, 2009).