Asian Mental Health Partnership Initiative
The Asian-American community is faced with a mental health crisis. According to recent statistics, it was found that Asian American women have the highest suicide rate among women over age 65 as well as the second highest among women 15 to 24, and that nearly one out of two Asian-Americans will have difficulty accessing mental health treatment because they cannot find services that meet their linguistic needs. Unfortunately many other barriers such as the mistrust of mental health services, cultural stigma prevent many AAs from accessing mental health care when they need it, furthering the severity of these issues.
In September 2007, the Asian Mental Health Partnership Initiative (AMHPI) was initiated by the AHCI to address those very issues. The program aims to increase AA awareness of and accessibility to culturally and linguistically competent mental health services and resources. In partnership with community-based organizations and mental health providers invested in the APIA communities, the program will:
- Identify current mental health issues, attitudes, help-seeking practices, and commonly used resources.
- Identify and reduce barriers to mental health care and services through education and dialogue
- Identify resources for cultural and linguistically appropriate mental health care
- Increase mental health literacy and access to culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health education resources among Chicago's limited English proficient APIA communities
- Build the capacity of partnering APIA community-based organizations to address the mental health needs/ emotional support needs of their clients.
- Conduct youth outreach with the long term goal of diversifying the social services/mental health workforce.
The AMHPI is funded by the Office of Minority Health (Department of Health and Human Services) as a bilingual/bicultural demonstration grant.
For more information about this program, please email julia@asianhealth.org
