Cultural Phenomenon and Bio-Cultural Variations Among Asian Americans

Paper 2: Asian Americans
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Paper 2: Asian Americans
A characteristic cultural phenomenon that is associated with Asian Americans is the high value placed on family. As noted by Paik et al. (2017), in general, all groups belonging to Asian American ethnicity uphold the family unit, with the parents playing an important role in promoting values such as hard work, discipline, and educational achievement. Given the high value placed on the family unit, Asian Americans are more likely to be married than other ethnic groups in America. Therefore, aspects related to marriage such as parenthood and homeownership are valued greatly by Asian Americans. Paik et al. (2017) described the family structure in the ethnic group as characterized by interdependence and hierarchy. The high value placed in the family unit comes with authoritarian parenting styles.
Furthermore, parents in the Asian American group have high expectations of their children, especially on education and career achievement. Arguably, the family unit is the main characteristic of the Asian American group. Other phenomena include collectivism and the high value placed on education and career achievement.
There are some healthcare beliefs and practices that are common among Asian Americans. Many Asian Americans do not believe that therapy is a credible method of addressing emotional problems (Kim & Zane, 2016). It is important to recognize the treatment credibility is important in guiding the help-seeking intentions of people. Therefore, with the lack of belief in therapy's credibility among Asian Americans, they are more likely to suffer more from emotional problems. Asian Americans also do not consider self-disclosure beneficial or valuable to promoting their mental health issues (Kim & Zane, 2016). This is primarily because the idea of self-disclosure is against Asian values that emphasize non-revealing of family problems, the maintenance of social harmony, and the confinement of emotions. With these values, it is difficult for community members to open up about their health problems as they fear stigmatization. As described by American Psychiatric Association (2019), the group members tend to underutilize health care services. Therefore, the group's health care practices are non-disclosure of personal information, non-belief in therapy, and consequently the underutilization of health care services.
Learning cultural health care practices is instrumental in understanding the behaviors that may influence the group's health care choices. First, learning cultural health care practices is important because it equips healthcare professionals with the knowledge that can help understand patients' behavior from a particular group (Sharifi, Adib-Hajbaghery, & Najafi, 2019). Specifically, learning the cultural health practices of Asian Americans can help a healthcare practitioner understand how they behave during illnesses. As determined earlier, Asian Americans do not self-disclose easily. Understanding this behavior can help a health practitioner advance the right type of care to members of the ethnic group. Second, learning cultural health practices can help health practitioners improve their cultural sensitivity. This way, they ...