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Primary Submission Category: Social/relational factors
Connecting Support: Social Network Diversity, Mental Health, and Help-Seeking Among Young Asian Americans
Authors: Hsiu-yu Yang,
Presenting Author: Hsiu-yu Yang*
Background
Asian American (AA) youth are less likely than their White peers to seek professional help for mental health problems, partly due to cultural stigma and model minority expectations (Lee et al., 2009; Pham et al., 2017). Instead, many rely on close friends when facing mental health challenges (Derr, 2016; Kim & Lee, 2022). However, little is known about how personal networks influence mental health service utilization. Because social ties facilitate information flow and belief exchange, I test how network attributes—such as number of friends, isolation, and diversity in racial and migration-status (1, 2, 3+ gen American) composition—may shape how AA youth perceive and utilize mental health services.
Method
I use Waves 1 and 2 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). At wave 1, around 90,000 7–12th graders were asked to nominate up to ten close friends. These nominations are used to construct network measures including in-degree, out-degree, isolation, and network diversity in race and migration status. Diversity is measured with the Index of Qualitative Variation (IQV), a 0–1 index of categorical diversity. Outcomes include depressive symptoms (CES-D) and a binary indicator on past-year mental health service utilization at Wave 2. Linear and logistic regression models are estimated across racial groups, with a focus on AA youth.
Result
AA youth have the lowest in- and out-degrees among racial groups but the most diverse networks in terms of race (IQV = 0.19) and migration status (IQV = 0.27). AA also shows higher CES-D than White youth. Asian boys are less likely to seek mental health help than White boys (p<0.01). Among Asian boys, greater migration-status diversity in social networks increases the likelihood of seeking help (OR = 27.3, p<0.05) , whereas racial diversity does not.
Conclusion
Findings suggest friendship networks may play an important role in shaping mental health help-seeking behaviors among AA youth.