Religious leaders’ assessment and attribution of the causes of mental illness: an in-depth exploration of Vietnamese American Buddhist leaders

Abstract

Among Asian Americans, particularly within immigrant communities, religious leaders are respected and sought out for support and guidance. There is a need to examine how religious leaders, especially within non-Christian faiths, identify persons and ascribe meaning and attributions to mental health concerns. The aim of this paper was to address this knowledge gap by exploring the perceptions of five Vietnamese American Buddhist leaders in regards to mental illness. Using qualitative analytic techniques we identified appearance, behaviours, and cognitive impairments that leaders interpreted as indicators of a mental health condition. Religious leaders cited messy and overly adorned outer appearance, aggressive and violent behaviours, and abnormal cognitive functioning as indicative of mental health problems. They attributed mental illness to a variety of causes: daily stressors, mind-body imbalance, karma, virtuous deeds, and spiritual possession. Findings inform strategies for faith-based initiatives and mental health service delivery to religiously affiliated Asian Americans.

Keywords:

• Buddhism
• Southeast Asia
• attitudes towards mental illness
• faith-based
• Asian Americans
• mental health disparities

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Karen K. Lee for assistance with project management and oversight of data collection procedures. We especially thank the monks and nuns for sharing their time and rich stories for this research. We would also like to thank Drs. Michelle Johnson, Stuart Kirk, and Sally Maliski for comments on previous drafts of this manuscript.

This study was supported in part from a grant Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Southern California awarded to the second author. Additional research support was provided to the second author by the School of Social Work, University of Southern California.