Journal of Counseling Psychology 1986, Vol. 33. No. 3, 331-336 Copyright 1986 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-0167/86/S00.75 Help Seeking and Problem Perception Among Asian Americans Terence J. Tracey Department of Educational Psychology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Frederick T. L. Leong University of Maryland Cynthia Glidden Department of Educational Psychology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The presenting concerns of counseling center clients (N = 3,050) were compared as they varied by ethnicity (Asian Americans vs. whites), gender, and previous counseling experi- ence. Asian-American clients were much more likely to perceive themselves as having educational/vocational concerns, whereas white clients were disproportionately more likely to admit to personal/emotional concerns. The comparison among seven different Asian- American groups revealed that Filipino-American and Asian-American-white mix clients were more likely to endorse personal or emotional concerns than other Asian-American groups. Gender and previous counseling experience were found to be related to the presenting concern, but the effects were the same in each ethnic comparison. The results are interpreted with respect to what counselors should be aware of in interacting with Asian-American clients as well as how they differ both from white clients and among themselves. It is fairly well documented that Asian Americans un- derutilize psychological services (Kitano, 1969; S. Sue & D. W. Sue, 1974; Yamamoto, 1978). Their underutilization does not result from a lesser need. Although American so- ciety views Asian Americans as a "model" minority (S. Sue & Kitano, 1973), this does not mean that Asian Amer- icans have fewer problems. On the contrary, Asian Amer- icans have shown higher than normal levels of disturbance (Kuo, 1984; Leong, 1986; Marsella, Sanborn, Kameoka, Shizuru, & Brennan, 1975; S. Sue & McKinley, 1975; Thomas & Comer, 1973). Therefore, we should be con- cerned with why Asian-American students underutilize psy- chological services. Lin, Tardiff, Donetz, and Goresky (1978) found that white and Asian-American students seek help in different ways. Asian Americans are less likely to request outside help for emotional difficulties. Because the family name and "face" are so important to Asian-Americans, they tend to look first to their families for help to avoid having their name viewed poorly by others (Webster & Fretz, 1978) and to be more reticent in publicly admitting problems and seeking help (S. Sue & Kitano, 1973). D. W. Sue (1973) stated that Asian Americans are taught to control their feelings much more than are non-Asian Americans. It is not surprising then that fewer Asian-American clients seek traditional per- A version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the American College Personnel Association, Boston, April 1985. We would like to thank Edward Kaneshige, Director of the Center for Student Development at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, for sharing the data with us. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Terence J. Tracey, Department of Educational Psychology, Uni- versity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1310 South Sixth Street, Champaign, Illinois 61820. sonal counseling. By coming in, the student is publicly admitting that he or she has a problem, and then the student is expected to openly discuss what he or she has been cul- turally taught to control. Though underrepresented, Asian-American clients do come in for help. Our experience is that when Asian-American students do seek help, they present very different problems from white students. Asian-American students seem much more prone to focus on the academic arena, whereas white students are more likely to seek help for emotional or in- terpersonal difficulties. D. W. Sue and Kirk (1975) found that Asian-American students underutilize a campus psy- chiatric clinic but overutilize the counseling center. They attribute this difference to Asian-American students feeling more comfortable dealing with academic and vocational issues than with personal or emotional issues. These aca- demic issues are more appropriate for the counseling center than the psychiatric center. As Battle et al. (1966) suggest, presenting problems show how clients see their difficulties and how they will accept help. We examined the differences between problems presented by Asian-American and white clients in hopes of better understanding how the help-seek- ing process differs for Asian Americans. Besides viewing problem perception as a function of eth- nicity, we hypothesized that two other variables may mod- erate the relation. Specifically, we thought client gender and previous counseling experience also affected how clients perceived their problems. Marsella et al. (1975) found clear gender and ethnicity differences in students' self-reported depression on several scales. Women reported greater levels of depression, regardless of their ethnicity. Given these results, we anticipated that women would be more likely to present personal/emotional problems, regardless of their ethnic background. Research has demonstrated that previous counseling ex- perience affects how people perceive and label their prob- 331