Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Community Mental Health Journal https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-020-00723-3 ORIGINAL PAPER Examining Diferent Strategies for Stigma Reduction and Mental Health Promotion in Asian Men in Toronto Kenneth Fung 1,2  · Jenny J. W. Liu 3  · Rick Sin 4  · Yogendra Shakya 5,6  · Sepali Guruge 4  · Amy Bender 7  · Josephine P. Wong 4 Received: 31 January 2019 / Accepted: 3 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract Mental illness stigma has detrimental efects on health and wellbeing. Approaches to address stigma in racialized popula- tions in Western nations need to emphasize inclusivity, social justice, and sociocultural intersectionality of determinants of health. The current paper evaluates three intervention approaches to reduce stigma of mental illness among Asian men in Toronto, Canada. Participants received one of four group interventions: psychoeducation, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Contact-based Empowerment Education (CEE), and a combination of ACT+CEE. Self-report measures on stigma (CAMI, ISMI) and social change (SJS) were administered before and after the intervention. A total of 535 Asian men completed the interventions. Overall analyses found that all intervention approaches were successful in reducing stigma and promoting social change. Subscale diferences suggest that CEE may be more broadly efective in reducing mental illness stigmatizing attitudes while ACT may be more specifcally efective in reducing internalized stigma. More work needs to be done to elucidate mechanisms that contribute to socioculturally-informed mental illness stigma interventions for racialized communities and traditionally marginalized populations. Keywords Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) · Contact-based Empowerment Education (CEE) · Mental health · Stigma · Mental illness · Intervention research · Asian Men Introduction Asian immigrants are among the fastest growing ethnic groups in Canada, and in many cities in the Greater Toronto Area, the Asian population now represents the major- ity ethno-racial group (Statistics Canada 2016). However, Asian Canadians, especially immigrants, face higher levels of unemployment, under-employment, and low-income rate compared to White/Caucasian Canadians. The literature on the “healthy immigrant efect” phenomena shows that the health advantages observed in new immigrants decline after immigration (George et al. 2015; Fung and Guzder 2018), impacted by socioeconomic inequities and other accultura- tive stresses (Li and Seidman 2010; Sorkin et al. 2011). The Asian immigrants’ mental health needs are found to be sel- dom met, as they have high rates of mental illness, with a lifetime prevalence of 17.3% for any psychiatric disorder, service underutilization, and delays in accessing mental health care services (Chen et al. 2015; Chiu et al. 2016, 2018). * Kenneth Fung ken.fung@uhn.ca 1 Asian Initiative in Mental Health, Equity, Gender, and Populations Division, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto Western Hospital, 399 Bathurst Street, 9 EW, Toronto, ON M5T 2S8, Canada 2 Department of Psychiatry, UHN - Toronto Western Hospital, Toronto, Canada 3 Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada 4 Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada 5 Access Alliance, Toronto, Canada 6 Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada 7 Laurence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada