Help-Seeking in a Crisis: COVID-19-Related Racial Discrimination and Asian American College Students’ Mental Health

ABSTRACT

Researchers have documented an exponential rise of anti-Asian hate during the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting adverse psychological impact on Asian American college students. Despite wide exposure to substantial risk factors, the increase in rates of mental health treatment for Asian American students during the pandemic has been minimal. In light of the significant dearth of related research, this article reviewed pandemic-related risk factors for Asian Americans and applied longstanding barriers relating to mental health treatment to the current crises, with a particular focus on college students. The researchers presented the historical trends regarding help-seeking needs and behavior, as well as how those trends could apply during and following the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Asian American
• college students
• COVID-19
• racial discrimination
• treatment utilization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

There is no dataset associated with this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was not supported by any funding.