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Asian Americans (AA) in the United States, and throughout the world, commonly hold a negative connotation or stigma regarding seeking mental health services. Unique cultural stigmas and beliefs of AA play an important role when examining why this population group is less likely to engage in therapy. This article explains why these cultural stigmas and beliefs contribute to the lack of mental health help seeking. Through examining these stigmas, perception of therapy, loss of face, and parental control among AA will allow therapists to have a better understanding when they are working with this population. Also, the consideration is given of how the increase of Anti-Asian racism due to the COVID-19 pandemic affects AA and the challenges it creates. This article includes a case example that provides information on how stigmas impact an AA family who have differing cultural values and expectations while experiencing discrimination from COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is a large body of knowledge on the coming-out experience, only few studies examine the coming-out experience of Latino gay men in the United States and whether cultural norms in the Latino community influence the way fathers respond to their sons' disclosure of same-sex attraction. The author conducted a systematic review to identify studies that focused on the coming out experience of Latino gay men in the U.S. The author searched ProQuest, PsychINFO, and Social Work Abstracts, using search terms including LGBT, gay or homosexual, Latino or Hispanic, coming out or disclosure, father or parents, or family. Findings revealed that cultural norms influenced the coming out process for most Latino gay men in the studies, resulting in negative health outcomes. Limitations, as well as implications for practice and research were discussed in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a lack of research on the maternal guilt of working Latina mothers. A grounded theory methodology study on this topic was conducted with 12 Latina mothers in the South Central region of the United States. Data analysis revealed five themes: the Compensatory Parenting Trap (parenting behaviors that attempt to make up for the absence of mothers by indulging their children in ways that violate cultural norms), Proximity Desire (a yearning to be physically close in location to one's children to compensate for guilt from separation), Ultimate Caregiver Comparison (the deifying of past generations of self-sacrificing family members as superior mothers against whom Latina mothers deem themselves failures), Familismo Paradox (the attempt to honor conflicting cultural norms to be a self-sacrificing mother who is also educated and financially secure), and Redefining Cultural Norms (reaction to the violation of cultural norms among working Latina mothers that involves expanding cultural expectations of gender in parenting). Results indicated that working Latina mothers face double binds in gender and cultural expectations that contribute to feelings of maternal guilt, as reflected in the above themes. Latina mothers demonstrate resilience in responding to this tension by restructuring cultural norms to alleviate guilt and protect their children from inheriting the same stressors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a paucity of research on HIV risk factors and risk reduction among African immigrants living in the US. This is despite the fact that the literature on HIV prevention and treatment continues to grow. We conducted a focused review to identify cultural factors contributing to the high incidence of HIV among African immigrants and best practices to increase engagement in HIV prevention services in this population. We conducted a search for empirical research published between 2009 and 2019, yielding 17 relevant studies with 16 unique samples. Inadequate knowledge about HIV transmission, low HIV risk perception, and stigma may be barriers to engaging in HIV prevention. Targeted interventions included bundled HIV testing, flexible scheduling, and involvement of community leaders in intervention planning and implementation. Implications for practice and directions for future research among this population are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children are expected to self‐regulate their behaviour, even in emotionally charged situations. Yet, such expectations for self‐regulation, the degree to which compliance is expected, and the specific regulatory behaviours deemed desirable, vary by culture, age of child, and specific situation. In this study, 34 Chinese (17 females) and 39 U.S. (19 females) preschoolers were observed and compared in two socioemotionally challenging situations. Children's compliance to explicit and implicit rules, their regulatory behaviours, and the associations between regulatory behaviours and rule compliance were analysed across the two samples. U.S. children showed greater resistance to temptation and similar levels of repair of mishap as compared to Chinese children. In addition, Chinese children used more avoidance and self‐soothing strategies and fewer distractive strategies than U.S. children. The effectiveness of regulatory behaviours in predicting rule compliance varied by both task condition and cultural group. Object and self distractions were associated with lower rule compliance in the mishap task. Social distraction was positively predictive of U.S. children's rule compliance in the mishap task, but negatively associated with their compliance in the temptation task. Social distraction was unhelpful for Chinese children's compliance in both tasks. The complexities of cultural variations and dynamics in their relations to children's rule compliance and regulatory behaviours are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience refers to a set of personal qualities and abilities that allow an individual to confront challenges, risks, or traumatic experiences in an integrated manner and to thrive in the face of significant adversities. This cross-sectional study explores resilience, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and family norms with disclosure of mental health problems (FNAD) in a sample of 182 Filipino American women (FAW). Participants completed survey measures of resilience, PTSD, and FNAD and open-ended questions about beliefs and reasons for (not) disclosing mental health problems outside the family. Previous research found that the rates of psychological trauma and depression among FAW are higher than those in other Asian ethnic groups, which makes it necessary to investigate the protective characteristic of resilience among FAW. According to our results, foreign-born FAW had a significantly lower PTSD and greater resilience as compared to their US-born counterparts. A significant negative relationship between PTSD and resilience was observed only among foreign-born FAW. We also found a conditional moderating effect of FNAD on the negative relationship between resilience and PTSD. The results of our qualitative analysis of the participants' responses to the open-ended questions of the survey showed that FAW's family norms of nondisclosure are related to the cultural value of "saving face," a salient cultural construct among Asian family members. Results suggest that protective properties of resilience against PTSD are influenced by cultural factors, such as FNAD. Taken together, our findings underscore the importance of considering the impact of collectivistic cultural values (e.g., FNAD) in future research on resilience among Asian Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. discourse regarding the practice of genital cutting differs depending on the perceived sex of the body. The authors understand this difference as crucial to the construction of gender normative body projects in the contemporary United States. Using a content analysis of 172 randomly sampled newspaper articles in the United States, we present differences in not only the value position of media but in the framing of genital alteration across sexes or genders and national contexts. We find that U.S. media overwhelmingly exhibits a positive viewpoint regarding the circumcision of male bodies and considers the question to be a fundamentally medical one. Our analysis suggests that while personal narrative is employed to center the personhood of females who have been circumcised, the device is also used to normalize parental choice when discussing male circumcision. Our analysis shows that U.S. media engages almost exclusively white male voices as experts in the discussion of normative male body presentation, while a relative diversity of opinions is deemed legitimate for female bodies and genitals. Given these findings, we argue that media-driven discourse is key to perpetuating the currently normative body projects that undergird conceptions of bodies as fundamentally different dependent on gender role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Immigrants in the USA are confronted with health disparities, including childhood obesity and obesity-related chronic diseases. We aimed to identify perceptions of childhood body weight, approaches to raising healthy children and desires for supportive programmes of Somali, Latino and Hmong (SLM) parents in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA.Design: Using community-based participatory research, ten focus groups (FG) were conducted with sixty-seven parents (n 28 Somali, three FG; n 19 Latino, four FG; n 20 Hmong, three FG) of 3-12-year-old children in their native language. Demographic information was collected.Results: SLM parents perceived that health is not necessarily weight-based; childhood obesity is caused by overeating, eating unhealthy foods and sedentary activities; traditional foods are generally healthy while American foods are generally unhealthy; and healthy children are inherently physically active. Parents identified their goals as feeding children so they would be healthy and happy, helping them be active and safe, and teaching them to cook traditional foods to be self-sufficient and maintain their cultural identity. Parents were challenged by children's unhealthy food and sedentary preferences, their own uncertainties about healthy foods and behaviours, and structural factors. Parents thought interventions could help them with these challenges, including information about healthy foods, age-appropriate portion sizes, safe places to be active and strategies tailored to their cultural norms.Conclusions: SLM parents are trying to raise healthy-weight children based on their understanding of children's health, weight, diet and physical activity, while dealing with social, economic and environmental challenges and trying to maintain cultural identity and traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior literature has utilized many theories to explain an organization's post-adoption technology use of social media platforms, but none of the common models include status as either a primary or a moderating variable. This is a significant gap in the literature because status is a structural enabler and inhibitor that determines acceptable and unacceptable behavior in a given setting. In an empirical study of Twitter and the cultural norm of retweeting for a sample of US colleges and universities, the authors demonstrate the following: (1) middle-status institutions had a higher likelihood of following the retweeting cultural norm relative to their high- and low-status counterparts, (2) middle- and lowstatus institutions who followed the retweeting cultural norm in a manner consistent with their status experienced greater post-adoption success relative to those institutions who did not, but the reverse was evident for high-status institutions (who appear to be rewarded for deviation from this cultural norm), and (3) the negative effect of deviating from retweeting cultural norms on post-adoption success is more pronounced with decreasing status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of factors influence the disclosure of child sexual abuse by survivors. While the influence of race and ethnicity on disclosure patterns is getting more attention, little has been written on abused children of Pacific Islanders, due in part to both lack of relevant data and a relatively small Pacific Islander population in the United States. Drawing on interviews with Pacific Islander women who were sexually abused in childhood and who delayed revealing their victimization, we explore the reasons for delayed disclosure. Findings suggest that cultural norms and family dynamics affect disclosure decisions. Concerns for the family and self-blame were the most common reasons for delay and lack of disclosure. We discuss implications of the findings and make policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Health care institutions are often severely criticized for regulating the lives of individuals who deviate from socially sanctioned norms. In teaching people where they fit in the conventional scheme of things, institutions often reproduce socially dominant ideologies of normality, health, and self. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a university-based gender identity clinic in the United States, I demonstrate that while some institutions adopt dominant cultural frameworks, others critically assess these. To understand the intricacies of the clinic’s psychotherapeutic practices, I analyze the clinicians’ constructions of health and suffering. Instead of viewing transgenderism as a psychiatric condition, these clinicians approach it as a normal human condition that is marginalized by society’s heteronormative values. The analysis, attentive to the interaction among social context, institutional work, and psychotherapeutic ideologies, shows that while some institutions reproduce hegemonic cultural frameworks, others, in their attempts to alleviate people’s suffering, do challenge dominant social norms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two studies investigated norms related to communal strength in the United States and Egypt. Communal strength reflects the extent to which individuals feel responsible for meeting the needs of relationship partners, varies between relationships, and predicts caregiving. Participants indicated the communal strength marital partners should feel towards their spouse, mother, and best friend. In the United States, women reported wives should feel the most communal strength towards their husbands and mothers, but husbands should feel more towards their wives than mothers or best friends. American men reported both spouses should feel the highest communal strength towards their spouses and mothers. In Egypt, men and women agreed that wives should have the highest communal strength for their husbands and mothers, but husbands should have higher communal strength for their mothers than their wives or best friends. These findings reflect cultural variation in the perception of ideal communal strength following marriage, and highlight the ways in which expectations related to caregiving may differ between spouses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the psychometric properties of the Polish version of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire—Revised (IBQ-R). A group of 396 pairs of parents was studied, and a 3-factor structure of IBQ-R emerged with differences comparing to the original U.S. sample and a prior replication Russian sample. Analyses demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency and high consistency rating between both parents' scores. Additionally, a comparison of the scores of IBQ-R scales between Polish and previously reported U.S. data was made, showing that Polish infants scored higher on negative affectivity scales and lower on surgency/extraversion and orientation/regulation scales. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bicultural individuals vary in the degree to which their two cultural identities are integrated. Among Asian-Americans, for instance, some experience their Asian and American sides as compatible whereas others experience them as conflicting. Past research on judgments finds this individual difference affects the way bicultural individuals respond to situations that cue their cultures. Asian-Americans with high bicultural identity integration (BII) assimilate to norms of the cued culture (e.g., they exhibit typically American judgments when in situations that cue American culture), whereas Asian-Americans with low BII do the opposite, contrasting against the cue (e.g., they exhibit typically Asian judgments when in American situations). We investigated whether this dynamic similarly affects creative performance, which differs cross-culturally in that novelty is encouraged more by American than East Asian norms. In two experiments, we found that cues to American (vs. Asian) culture increase the novelty of solutions in divergent thinking tasks for Asian-Americans with high BII (assimilative response) yet decrease it for Asian-Americans with low BII (contrastive response). We discuss theoretical implications for culture and creativity research and practical implications for firms seeking to foster creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study determines the extent to which admissions criteria and cultural norms predict the success of a foreign-trained dentist in a United States dental educational program. Correlation and regression tests were applied to an eleven-year period from 1994 to 2004 of retrospective admissions data for 144 International Dental Studies Program students. Five cultural norms were derived from the collective cultural dimensions of a scholarly work of validated multinational surveys by Geert Hofstede. These five cultural norms are Power Distance (degree of inequality between "haves" and "have-nots" in a culture); Individualism (support for independent or group behavior); Long-Term View (deferred gratification versus quick results/rewards); Masculinity (emphasis on performance/outcomes versus socialization); and Uncertainty Avoidance (ability to cope with an uncertain future). Hofstede's calculated country scores on these cultural dimensions applied to the students' countries of education and their influence on students' academic performance were assessed by correlation and regression analyses. Results showed that the TOEFL and National Board Part 1 examinations and the cultural norm of Long-Term View were the most positive predictors of grade point averages. The other four cultural norms studied were not predictors of success. Those who applied to the program more than once before being accepted did less well in the program, yet "less Well" might have meant that they graduated with a 3.0 instead of a 3.5 GPA. Generally speaking, the more recent the graduated class, the higher the ending GPA has been. Admissions committees should determine if they want to invest the resources required to implement a multitude of admissions predictors to find the best of the qualified applicants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts in the 1960s to demonstrate the value of the “new archaeology” involved showing that the competing culture-history paradigm was inferior. One allegedly weak plank in that paradigm had to do with how culture historians viewed culture-as a set of ideas transmitted in the form of ideal norms or mental templates. Lewis Binford referred to this view as “”normative theory.” In archaeology that view was manifest in the equation of artifact types with prehistoric norms-an equation that, according to Binford, the culture historians had made so that they could track the flow of ideas through time and thus write culture history. Culture historians regularly subscribed to cultural transmission as the theoretical backdrop for their artifact-based chronometers such as seriation and the direct historical approach, but with few exceptions they perceived only a weak relationship between norms and artifact types. It was not until 1960, in a paper by James Gifford, that what Binford labeled as normative theory appeared in anything approaching a complete form. Ironically, the first applications of normative theory were products of the new archaeologists, not the culture historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective : Parents play an integral role in young adults' sexual health including human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine decision-making. The objective of this study was to explore conversations regarding sexual activity in Haitian households and the influence of such conversations on young Haitian women's HPV vaccine discussion with their parents. Methods: From a large university in the southeastern United States, 30 Haitian-American college women (ages 17-26) were recruited for semi-structured in-depth interviews. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Interview transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: Most participants stated that they either did not have conversations regarding sexual activity or the conversations that they had were described as 'uncomfortable' or 'awkward'. Many participants stated that once parents knew that HPV is sexually transmitted, their discussions about the vaccine would be considered an announcement of their sexual debut or sexual activity. Hence, many decided to not discuss the HPV vaccine with their parents. Conclusion: Findings have important implications for HPV vaccine uptake. Results showed that a lack of conversations about sexual activity within Haitian households led to limited discussions about the HPV vaccine among young Haitian-American college women and their parents. Future HPV vaccine uptake efforts should integrate familial and cultural beliefs about female sexuality, while focusing on cervical cancer prevention.

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is 19.7% in Haiti (DeGennaro et al., 2018). Haitian American women (HAW) experience difficulties with adherence to T2DM treatment and management (Bivins, 2016; Magny-Normilus et al., 2019; Vimalananda et al., 2011; Huffman et al., 2013); however, no previous study was found that focused exclusively on Haitian American women with T2DM. Van Manen's six research activities guided this phenomenological qualitative inquiry. Recruitment included 25 Haitian American women (N = 25) with T2DM from three South Florida counties. Data were collected using a vignette and audio-recorded semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions. Recordings were then transcribed and analyzed to identify thematic concepts and patterns. Themes of spiritualizing and shifting cultural norms with the subtheme of dietary restrictions were found. In conclusion, to promote health outcomes nurses must incorporate these salient factors in the care of Haitian American women with T2DM., Competing Interests: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose., (Copyright© by the National Black Nurses Association, Inc.)

Chronic hepatitis B infection (HBV) disproportionately affects African Immigrant (AI) communities in the U.S., with a reported infection rate of 15%. HBV screening rates within these communities are low. This study sought to better understand the socio-cultural determinants associated with low HBV screening among AI communities and identify potential strategies to help inform the development of effective HBV education and screening interventions. Seventeen in-depth interviews were conducted with community health experts working in AI communities throughout the U.S. Interviews explored the potential impact of culture, perception of health, awareness of HBV, religious practices, current screening practice, provider relationship, and behaviors towards general prevention. Interview data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Religious preferences and cultural norms affect health care access, perceptions towards prevention, awareness of HBV, and contribute to myths and stigma within this population. Participants reported a lack of HBV knowledge and awareness and barriers to health care access including, cost, language, racism, understanding of Western Medicine, and usage of traditional medicine. This study elucidates the role of religious and cultural beliefs as barriers to HBV screening and care. Results can contribute to public health efforts to increase awareness, screening and vaccination efforts within AI communities.