Masculine Ideals, Acculturation, and Attitudes toward Seeking Psychological Help among Mexican American Adult Males

There is a paucity of published research identifying the relationships between masculine ideals, acculturation, and attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help among adult Mexican American men. The purpose of the current study was to examine how masculine ideals and acculturation can negatively affect attitude toward seeking psychological help among Mexican American adult males, a fast-growing population in the U.S. that is vulnerable to poor mental health outcomes. Among those factors reported to account for mainly negative perceptions in this population are masculine ideals, machismo, and acculturation; however, the effects of these factors on Mexican American males have not been quantitatively examined. A lack of quantitative studies in the research literature that examined the combined effects of masculine ideals and acculturation on the help seeking behavior among adult male Mexican Americans demands more investigation Therefore, the research gap for this study is a detailed examination of how masculine ideals and acculturation influence the help-seeking behavior of adult male Mexican Americans. This study explored this gap by using quantitative methods to examine the extent to which masculine ideals and acculturation affected the attitude of Mexican Americans to seek psychological help. The research design consisted of a quantitative survey-based, cross-sectional approach to explore whether relationships exist between acculturation, masculine ideals, and attitude toward seeking psychological help. The results indicated that they only seek help when they are more acculturated. The social change implications are that mental health practitioners may be able to better understand their Mexican American clients as a result of this study