Mental Health First Aid Training in Chinese Americans MHFA-CA - This application (WHFA-CA) proposes to implement a community-based national strategy to increase mental health awareness, decrease stigma toward mental illness, and increase usage of mental health services in the Chinese American communities. The project team, in collaboration with the United Chinese Americans (UCA), a IRS 501c(3) national organization, will coordinate and partner with eight community organizations across seven states. UCA is a coalition of Chinese Americans consisting of 10 chapters and over 40 community partners in 32 states. By working with the partnering organizations, members of the UCA WAVES (Wellness, Advocacy, Voices, Education, and Support) team will provide Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training in Chinese Americans (CA) and refer individuals to professional services when needed. The specific project aims include: 1) Increase knowledge of mental illness and decrease stigma toward mental illness among Chinese Americans, 2) Increase usage of mental health services among Chinese Americans, and 3) Evaluate impact of the mental health training in the partnering Chinese American communities. To achieve these aims, the project team will: 1) Recruit and train 12 Chinese adults across the United States to be Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) trainers, 2) Develop and coordinate social media campaigns for MHFA, 3) Recruit and provide MHFA training to 1285 diverse groups of Chinese parents and community members across the United States, 4) Establish culturally sensitive mental health referral protocol for Chinese Americans, 5) Identify and establish a directory of culturally sensitive mental health providers among Chinese Americans in the partnering communities, 6) Develop tracking systems for usage of mental health services among Chinese Americans in the partnering communities, 7) Assess mental health knowledge and stigma before and post-training among all training participants, and 8) Analyze the survey data and report the results to the partnering communities and in a national conference. Partnering organizations in this project include the Chinese American Parents Organization (Maryland), Mental Health Association of Chinese Communities also known as National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) Chinese chapter (California), the Pennsylvania Governor's Advisory Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs (GACAPAA), the UCA Illinois chapter, as well as other well respected local organizations in North Carolina, Michigan, and Oregon. These partners have collaborated with UCA on “Asian Parents, American Children” education series since 2016 when UCA started youth mental health collaboratives based on urgent needs expressed by the community.
Currently, the proposed MHFA-CA project has commitments from two Asian American mental health service providers (California and Maryland) and two licensed mental health professionals (Chicago and North Carolina) who provide Mandarin services and have agreed to provide services as needed to project participants. Additionally, a support “warm line” in Chinese will be made available to training participants by NAMI Chinese. Altogether, we believe that the proposed project is urgently needed for the worsening mental health situation in the Chinese American communities. The training proposed will be impactful in increasing awareness in mental health, decreasing stigma and increasing usage of mental health services.
