Asian American is one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the state of Michigan and many of them are faced with significant mental health needs. Due to various barriers to disclosing mental health conditions and receiving mental health services, Michigan Asian Americans are significantly underserved for their mental health needs. In contrast to the salient mental health needs among Asian Americans, limited agencies in Michigan provided mental health services tailored to Asian American population and even fewer provided evidence-based interventions to Asian Americans’ mental challenges.
Therefore, Asian Center – Southeast Michigan will start a series of studies on Asian American Mental Health. The first step is to assess the mental health status and needs among Asian Americans. Only knowing their needs, can we design services and interventions to help the community. With special skills required for mental health studies, AC-SE MI teamed up with 2 academic professors of social work that are experts in the field to work on all the future mental health projects.
The first project is from a seeding fund of NIH (National Institute of Health) through University of Michigan MICHR program. The study includes mainly focus group discussions and qualitative survey of mental health concerns among Asian Americans. The project was kicked off in May of 2019, the study duration is one year.