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Depression literacy among Australians of Chinese-speaking background in Melbourne, Australia

BACKGROUND: This study investigated the knowledge of depression and preference for professional help, medications and treatment methods among Australians of Chinese-speaking background, and the perceptions of this population of the causes of mental illness. METHODS: Adopting a cluster convenience sa...

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Autores principales: Wong, Fu Keung Daniel, Lam, Yuk Kit Angus, Poon, Ada
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2827400/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20082724
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-10-7
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author Wong, Fu Keung Daniel
Lam, Yuk Kit Angus
Poon, Ada
author_facet Wong, Fu Keung Daniel
Lam, Yuk Kit Angus
Poon, Ada
author_sort Wong, Fu Keung Daniel
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: This study investigated the knowledge of depression and preference for professional help, medications and treatment methods among Australians of Chinese-speaking background, and the perceptions of this population of the causes of mental illness. METHODS: Adopting a cluster convenience sampling method, the study recruited 200 Chinese-speaking subjects from four major areas in metropolitan Melbourne where many Chinese live. The respondents were presented with a vignette describing an individual with depression and then asked questions to assess their understanding of depression and preference for professional help, medications and treatment methods. A comparative approach was used to compare the findings with those of a previous study of the mental health literacy of Australian and Japanese adults. RESULTS: Compared to the Australian and Japanese samples, a much lower percentage of Chinese-speaking Australians (14%) could correctly identify major depression described in the vignette, and a higher percentage believed that counseling professionals could be helpful. Higher percentages of those who believed that close family members could be helpful were found in the Chinese-speaking Australian and Japanese samples, and these two groups also expressed more uncertainty about the usefulness or harmfulness of certain medications compared to the Australian sample. Higher percentages of respondents in both the Chinese-speaking Australian and the Australian sample considered "lifestyle changes" to be helpful compared to the Japanese sample. In the Chinese-speaking sample, 30%, 17.4%, 33% and 27% of the respondents rated "traditional Chinese medicine doctors," "Chinese herbal medications," "taking Chinese nutritional foods/supplements" and "qiqong" as helpful. Many perceived "changing fungshui" and "traditional Chinese worship" to be harmful. Regarding the perception of causes of mental illness, items related to psychosocial perspectives including "life stress" and "interpersonal conflict" were rated highly by the respondents, whereas traditional beliefs including "punishment for misdeeds conducted by ancestors" and "demon possession" had the lowest ratings. CONCLUSIONS: Campaigns to increase the mental health literacy of Chinese-speaking Australians are needed. The abovementioned socially and culturally driven beliefs need to be taken into consideration in the development of culturally relevant education programs.
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spelling pubmed-28274002010-02-24 Depression literacy among Australians of Chinese-speaking background in Melbourne, Australia Wong, Fu Keung Daniel Lam, Yuk Kit Angus Poon, Ada BMC Psychiatry Research article BACKGROUND: This study investigated the knowledge of depression and preference for professional help, medications and treatment methods among Australians of Chinese-speaking background, and the perceptions of this population of the causes of mental illness. METHODS: Adopting a cluster convenience sampling method, the study recruited 200 Chinese-speaking subjects from four major areas in metropolitan Melbourne where many Chinese live. The respondents were presented with a vignette describing an individual with depression and then asked questions to assess their understanding of depression and preference for professional help, medications and treatment methods. A comparative approach was used to compare the findings with those of a previous study of the mental health literacy of Australian and Japanese adults. RESULTS: Compared to the Australian and Japanese samples, a much lower percentage of Chinese-speaking Australians (14%) could correctly identify major depression described in the vignette, and a higher percentage believed that counseling professionals could be helpful. Higher percentages of those who believed that close family members could be helpful were found in the Chinese-speaking Australian and Japanese samples, and these two groups also expressed more uncertainty about the usefulness or harmfulness of certain medications compared to the Australian sample. Higher percentages of respondents in both the Chinese-speaking Australian and the Australian sample considered "lifestyle changes" to be helpful compared to the Japanese sample. In the Chinese-speaking sample, 30%, 17.4%, 33% and 27% of the respondents rated "traditional Chinese medicine doctors," "Chinese herbal medications," "taking Chinese nutritional foods/supplements" and "qiqong" as helpful. Many perceived "changing fungshui" and "traditional Chinese worship" to be harmful. Regarding the perception of causes of mental illness, items related to psychosocial perspectives including "life stress" and "interpersonal conflict" were rated highly by the respondents, whereas traditional beliefs including "punishment for misdeeds conducted by ancestors" and "demon possession" had the lowest ratings. CONCLUSIONS: Campaigns to increase the mental health literacy of Chinese-speaking Australians are needed. The abovementioned socially and culturally driven beliefs need to be taken into consideration in the development of culturally relevant education programs. BioMed Central 2010-01-19 /pmc/articles/PMC2827400/ /pubmed/20082724 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-10-7 Text en Copyright ©2010 Wong et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research article
Wong, Fu Keung Daniel
Lam, Yuk Kit Angus
Poon, Ada
Depression literacy among Australians of Chinese-speaking background in Melbourne, Australia
title Depression literacy among Australians of Chinese-speaking background in Melbourne, Australia
title_full Depression literacy among Australians of Chinese-speaking background in Melbourne, Australia
title_fullStr Depression literacy among Australians of Chinese-speaking background in Melbourne, Australia
title_full_unstemmed Depression literacy among Australians of Chinese-speaking background in Melbourne, Australia
title_short Depression literacy among Australians of Chinese-speaking background in Melbourne, Australia
title_sort depression literacy among australians of chinese-speaking background in melbourne, australia
topic Research article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2827400/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20082724
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-10-7
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