Mexican American women college students' willingness to seek counseling : the role of religious cultural values, etiology, beliefs, and stigma / Na-Yeun Choi, Helen Youngju Kim, Elisabeth Gruber

Although the importance of religion in the help-seeking processes of Latinx populations has been discussed (e.g., Moreno & Cardemil, 2013), few studies have considered the effects of religious and cultural factors on Mexican American women's underutilization of professional mental health services and less willingness to seek counseling. To address this gap in the literature, this study focuses on religious cultural values reported by Mexican American college women and how sociocultural factors, such as spiritual and biological etiology beliefs and self-stigma, can shape their willingness to seek counseling, using the cultural influences on mental health (CIMH) theoretical framework (Hwang, Myers, Abe-Kim, & Ting, 2008). Using structural equation modeling, we tested 2 theoretically and empirically derived models of willingness to seek counseling among 276 Mexican American college women at a large Hispanic-serving university in the Southwest. The findings highlighted the direct and indirect ways in which religious cultural values related to willingness to seek counseling and the importance of accounting for etiology beliefs and self-stigma.

Psychology.