Active Agents in Mental Health Socialization: Asian American Youth's Interpretations of Parental Messages of Mental Health

Parents are the primary socializing agents from whom youth learn about mental health and help-seeking. Yet youth are not passive receivers, rather, they engage in an active process of interpreting parental messages regarding mental health. To understand this bidirectional process of mental health socialization, we developed and tested a new measure, the Youth Response to Parental Mental Health Socialization (YR-PMHS) scale, to assess how youth interpret parental mental health messages among a sample of 486 East and Southeast Asian American youth. A split-sample approach was used to first identify salient factors of youth response to parental mental health socialization through exploratory factor analyses, followed by confirmatory factor analyses to determine the final factor structure. Bivariate correlations were conducted with attitudes towards mental health and professional help-seeking as well as mental health outcomes. Results showed a correlated five-factor structure, revealing distinct yet interrelated pathways through which youth interpret parental messages of mental health. The five factors are: acknowledging cultural and generational gap, reluctance to burden parents, honoring parental desires, inferring parental dismissal, and preserving autonomy over distress. All factors were positively associated with depression and somatic symptoms, and mental health stigma, and three were negatively associated with attitudes toward professional help seeking. The YR-PMHS is a reliable and valid multidimensional measure of youth processes in parent mental health socialization. Researchers and clinicians can use the scale to identify youth processes in mental health socialization central to developing and culturally responsive family interventions and approaches to mental health literacy and engagement.