Assessing psychotherapy as a western healing practice through prediction of help-seeking attitudes

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study assessed the ability of six theory-derived variables representing possible signifiers for the Western cultural components of psychotherapy for predicting attitudes towards professional psychological help-seeking. Using data from 377 participants from India, regression analyses were conducted to test six hypotheses derived from Frank’s and Frank common factors model of psychotherapy. Results indicated a positive relationship between European American values and help-seeking attitudes, a negative relationship between Asian values and help-seeking attitudes, a positive relationship between westernization and help-seeking attitudes, and a negative relationship between cultural mistrust and help-seeking attitudes. Assessing a client’s cultural values, endorsement of a Western lifestyle, and level of cultural mistrust may be particularly predictive in determining suitability for and openness to psychotherapy with the single best predictor being European-American values. Those who do not adhere to Western values, who endorse more Asian values, who live a visibly non-Western lifestyle, and who have high mistrust of Western culture may be better suited for more culturally congruent healing methods.

KEYWORDS:

• Common factors model
• contextual model
• psychotherapy
• South Asian Indian
• attitudes towards seeking psychological help

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Given the high correlation between professional psychological help-seeking and gender frequently observed in Western literature (usually researching in Western countries), gender was considered as a covariate posthoc at the request of one of the manuscript reviewers, but did not demonstrate a statistically significant correlation with the MHSAS (representing help-seeking attitude) and thus was not considered further.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica Y. Ahn

Jessica Ahn completed her BSc. Psychology at McGill University and has served as a research assistant in Dr. Bedi’s Counselling/Psychotherapy Research, Teaching and Service Lab since May 2019. Her research interests include stigma towards counselling, how cultural factors influence help-seeking behavior, and forensic psychology.

Robinder P. Bedi

Dr. Robinder P. Bedi is an associate professor of counselling psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada and maintains a small independent practice as a registered psychologist. His research interests include international/cross-cultural/multicultural counselling and professional issues in counselling psychology.

Rajneesh Choubisa

Dr. Rajneesh Choubisa is an associate professor of psychology at the Birla Institute of Psychology, Pilani campus in India. His research interests include applied positive psychology, interventions research and health psychology, and mental health/well-being.

Namita Ruparel

Dr. Namita Ruparel is an assistant professor in the School of Business at Woxsen University in India. Her research interests include organizational behaviour, human resources, knowledge hiding, mental toughness and psychometrics.