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Chinese-Australians' Knowledge of Depression and Schizophrenia in the Context of Their Under-Utilization of Mental Health Care: an Analysis of Labelling

Centre for International Mental Health, School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne, Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit, St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia, s.klimidis{at}unimelb.edu

Fei-Hsiu Hsiao

College of Nursing, Taipei Medical University, Taipei

Iraklis Harry Minas

Centre for International Mental Health, School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne, Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit, St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia

Background: Low knowledge of and discrimination regarding mental disorders (MDs) may underpin lower access to mental health care by ethnic minority groups.

Aims: In Chinese-Australians, in relation to schizophrenia and depression, to assess (a) labels attached to MDs, (b) conceptual distinctiveness of MDs, (c) labelling accuracy against an Australian representative sample, (d) how syndrome variations may influence labelling, and (e) effects of exposure to MDs on labelling.

Method: 418 subjects were asked to indicate the labels they would apply to vignettes of depression and schizophrenia and whether they were exposed to these disorders personally or socially.

Results: The sample was broadly representative of the Australian-Chinese community: 51% and 47% `correctly' labelled the vignettes. Depression and schizophrenia labels were consistently discriminated and clustered with different other labels. Labelling accuracy surpassed Australians'. Labelling did not vary substantially between syndromes. Exposure related to increased labelling accuracy for depression.

Conclusions: Accuracy in labelling major forms of MDs does not appear low in Chinese-Australians and seems higher than in the Australian community. MDs were discriminated although syndrome variations were not. Findings dispute that low mental health care access and uptake is due to low recognition and discrimination of MDs in Chinese-Australians.

Key Words: Chinese • depression • ethnic minority groups • explanatory models • illness labels • mental health literacy • schizophrenia • service utilization

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, Vol. 53, No. 5, 464-479 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0020764007078357


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