Attitudes toward psychotherapy among three generations of Eastern European Jewish Americans.

This study sought to determine whether there is a difference in attitudes toward, and rates of utilization of, psychotherapy across three unrelated generations of Eastern European Jewish Americans: immigrants, children of immigrants, and grandchildren of immigrants. Hypotheses were made associating attitudinal change over the course of acculturation with changes in the following predictor variables: (1) time since immigration, (2) age, (3) sex, (4) educational level, (5) occupation, (6) religious affiliation, (7) familism, (8) language, and (9) coping style. Subjects were 173 Jewish adults averaging 58 years of age. The large majority were highly educated professionals. The immigrants, most of them from the Soviet Union and Romania, had lived in the United States an average of 20.8 years. A substantial proportion of subjects, 40.9%, had sought psychotherapy at some time in their lives. Subjects completed questionnaires regarding their beliefs about and experiences with psychotherapy. Other measures covered demographic information, coping styles, and life experiences. Attitudes were assessed using the four factors of the Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help scale: recognition of need, stigma tolerance, interpersonal openness, and confidence in mental health professionals. The findings revealed that generational differences do exist in usage of and attitudes toward psychotherapy. Immigrants perceived the least need to seek help for emotional problems, and correspondingly had sought help less than the other groups. They were also less interpersonally open than the other groups. Tolerance of stigma was quite high among all three groups, though children of immigrants showed the least concern with stigma. Several of the predictor variables were associated with attitudes toward psychotherapy; coping style was highly correlated with all four attitudinal variables, and several correlations were found with age, sex, and educational level as well. However, the variables which correlated with usage of and attitudes toward psychotherapy did not show a relationship with generational group and thus failed to shed light on why there was increased use of psychotherapy across the generations. These findings may be useful in demonstrating to mental health professionals that members of one ethnic group may not hold homogeneous attitudes toward psychotherapy. Further research, especially in the area of cultural factors, may enhance our understanding of generational change processes.PhDPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/103375/1/9319493.pdfDescription of 9319493.pdf : Restricted to UM users only