“If There’s One Bad Apple, It Affects All of Us”: Filipino-Canadian Men’s Cultural Perspectives on Mental Health, Mental Illness and Stigma
Publication: Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health
21 December 2022
Abstract
In Canada, there is a dearth of comprehensive literature on the specific needs for the health and well-being of racialized newcomers, especially for mental health in the rapidly growing Filipino-Canadian diaspora. Using two focus groups with 14 participants, this article identified the following themes: Filipino-Canadian men’s conceptualization of mental illness, health, and stigma; gender and intergenerational expectations as a form of mental health stigma; and motivations for joining the Strength In Unity (SIU) project. The insights from these Filipino men should inform approaches to addressing mental health in Filipino communities in Canada.
Résumé
Au Canada, il y a un défaut de littérature sur les besoins spécifiques quant à la santé et au bien-être des nouveaux arrivants racialisés, et particulièrement en ce qui concerne la santé mentale de la diaspora philippino-canadienne en forte croissance. À partir de deux groupes de discussion avec quatorze participants, cet article a défini les thèmes suivants : la conceptualisation de la maladie mentale, la santé et la stigmatisation chez les hommes philippino-canadiens ; le genre et les attentes intergénérationnelles en tant que forme de stigmatisation liée à la santé mentale ; et les motivations pour rejoindre le projet Strength In Unity (SIU). L’information recueillie auprès de ces hommes philippins devrait documenter les approches pour aborder la santé mentale au sein des communautés philippines du Canada.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Abe-Kim J., Gong F., and Takeuchi D. 2004 Religiosity, spirituality, and help-seeking among Filipino Americans: Religious clergy or mental health professionals? Journal of Community Psychology 32 6 675 -689 https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20026
Alcantara A. N. 1994 Gender roles, fertility, and the status of married Filipino men and women Philippine Sociological Review 42 1/4 94 -109 http://www.jstor.org/stable/41853665
Angeles L. C. 2001 The Filipino male as “macho-machunurin”: Bringing men and masculinities in gender and development studies Kasarinlan Journal of Third World Issues 16 1 9 -30
Bonifacio, G. T. (2013). Pinay on the Prairies: Filipino Women and Transnational Identities. UBC Press.
Chan D. C. and Litam S. D. A. 2021 Mental health equity of Filipino communities in COVID-19: A framework for practice and advocacy The Professional Counselor 11 1 73 -85 http://tpcjournal.nbcc.org
Coloma, R. S., McElhinny, B., Tungohan, E., Catungal, P. C., & Davidson, L. M. (2012). Filipinos in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility. University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442662728
Coloma R. S. and Pino F. L. 2016 “There’s hardly anything left”: Poverty and the economic insecurity of elderly Filipinos in Toronto Canadian Ethnic Studies 48 2 71 -97 https://doi.org/10.1353/ces.2016.0014
David E. J. R. 2010 Cultural mistrust and mental health help-seeking attitudes among Filipino Americans Asian American Journal of Psychology 1 1 57 -66 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018814
David, E. J. R. (2013). Brown skin, white minds: Filipino-/American postcolonial psychology. Information Age Publishing Inc.
David E. J. R. and Nadal K. L. 2013 The colonial context of Filipino American immigrants’ psychological experiences Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 19 3 298 -309 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032903
de Leon, C. (2018). “Pagod, dugot, pawis (exhaustion, blood, and sweat)”: Transnational practices of care and emotional labour among Filipino kin networks [York University]. https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/35480
Farrales M. 2019 Repurposing beauty pageants: The colonial geographies of Filipina pageants in Canada Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 37 1 46 -64 https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818796502
Ferrer I., Brotman S., and Grenier A. 2017 The experiences of reciprocity among Filipino older adults in Canada: Intergenerational, transnational, and community considerations Journal of Gerontological Social Work 60 4 313 -327 https://doi.org/10.1080/01634372.2017.1327916
Fung K. P.-L., Liu J. J. W., Sin R., Bender A., Shakya Y., Butt N., and Wong J. P.-H. 2019 Exploring mental illness stigma among Asian men mobilized to become community mental health ambassadors in Toronto Canada Ethnicity & Health 1 -19 https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2019.1640350
Gong F., Gage S.-J. L., and Tacata L. A. Jr. 2003 Helpseeking behavior among Filipino Americans: A cultural analysis of face and language Journal of Community Psychology 31 5 469 -488 https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.10063
Government of Canada. (2017, September 15). About mental illness [Education and awareness]. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/about-mental-illness.html
Guruge S., Fung K. P.-L., Sidani S., Este D., Morrow M., McKenzie K., and Wong J. P.-H. 2018 Study protocol: Mobilizing Asian men in Canada to reduce stigma of mental illness Contemporary Clinical Trials 71 133 -139 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cct.2018.06.009
Hansson E. K., Tuck A., Lurie S., and McKenzie K. 2012 Rates of mental illness and suicidality in immigrant, refugee, ethnocultural, and racialized groups in Canada: A review of the literature Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Revue Canadienne De Psychiatrie 57 2 111 -121 https://doi.org/10.1177/070674371205700208
Hilario C. T., Oliffe J. L., Wong J. P., Browne A. J., and Johnson J. L. 2018 “Just as Canadian as anyone else”? Experiences of second-class citizenship and the mental health of young immigrant and refugee men in Canada American Journal of Men’s Health 12 2 210 -220 https://doi.org/10.1177/1557988317743384
Livingston J., Patel N., Bryson S., Hoong P., Lal R., Morrow M., and Guruge S. 2018 Stigma associated with mental illness among Asian men in Vancouver, Canada The International Journal of Social Psychiatry 64 7 679 -689 https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764018805125
Luna, N. (2016, March 22). Patriarchy, Manny Pacquiao and Madonna. https://www.rappler.com/voices/imho/126707-patriarchy-manny-pacquiao-madonna/
Martinez A. B., Co M., Lau J., and Brown J. S. L. 2020 Filipino help-seeking for mental health problems and associated barriers and facilitators: A systematic review Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 55 1397 -1413 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-020-01937-2
Moodley, R., & Ocampo, M. (2014). Critical psychiatry and mental health: Exploring the work of Suman Fernando in clinical practice. London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Morrow M., Bryson S., Lal R., Hoong P., Jiang C., Jordan S., Patel N. B., and Guruge S. 2020 Intersectionality as an analytic framework for understanding the experiences of mental health stigma among racialized men International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction 18 5 1304 -1317 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-019-00140-y
Nadal, K. L., & Monzones, J. (2011). Neuropsychological assessments and Filipino Americans: Cultural implications for practice. In The neuropsychology of Asian Americans (pp. 47–70). Psychology Press.
Naderifar M., Goli H., and Ghaljaie F. 2017 Snowball sampling: A purposeful method of sampling in qualitative research Strides in Development of Medical Education 14 3 https://doi.org/10.5812/sdme.67670
Panaligan, A. (2021, December 31). Why is it so difficult to talk about Filipino men’s mental health? https://philstarlife.com/self/338608-filipino-men-mental-health
Pastorini, J. (2019). The first episode psychosis experience of Filipino-Canadians in Montreal [M.Sc., McGill University (Canada)]. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2516811438/abstract/6A86D78177B448DBPQ/1
Patton, M. Quinn. (2015). Qualitative research & evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice (Fourth edition.). SAGE Publications, Inc.
Pe-Pua R. and Protacio-Marcelino E. 2000 Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino psychology): A legacy of Virgilio G. Enriquez Asian Journal of Social Psychology 3 1 49 -71 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-839X.00054
Pratt, G., & PWC-BC. (2012). Families apart: Migrant mothers and the conflicts of labor and love (NED-New edition). University of Minnesota Press; JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/stable/10.5749/j.ctttt5jj
Rivera A. K. and Antonio C. A. T. 2017 Mental health stigma among Filipinos: Time for a paradigm shift Philippine Journal of Health Research and Development 21 2 20 -24
Salazar J. T. 2019 Rethinking Filipino masculinities: The case of the cosmopolitan tambay Kritika Kultura 33/34 859 -882
Salkind, N. J. (2010). Encyclopedia of Research Design. SAGE Publications.
Sanchez F. and Gaw A. 2007 Mental health care of Filipino Americans Psychiatric Services (Washington, D.C.) 58 6 810 -815 https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2007.58.6.810
Sato, C. L. (2017). University education as a process of self-discovery: Processes that facilitated the completion of university by young, second-generation Filipino men in Calgary. https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/28585
Statistics Canada. (2019, August 9). Census profile, 2016 census—Calgary [population centre], Alberta and Canada [Country]. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=POPC&Code1=0115&Geo2=PR&Co%20de2=48&SearchText=Calgary&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=All&%20GeoLevel=PR&GeoCode=0115&TABID=1&type=0
Thomas D. R. 2006 A general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative evaluation data American Journal of Evaluation 27 2 237 -246 https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214005283748
Tuazon V. E., Gonzalez E., Gutierrez D., and Nelson L. 2019 Colonial mentality and mental health help-seeking of Filipino Americans Journal of Counseling & Development 97 4 352 -363 https://doi.org/10.1002/jcad.12284
Tuliao A. P. 2014 Mental health help seeking among Filipinos: A review of the literature Asia Pacific Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy 5 2 124 -136 https://doi.org/10.1080/21507686.2014.913641
Tungohan E. 2013 Reconceptualizing motherhood, reconceptualizing resistance International Feminist Journal of Politics 15 1 39 -57 https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2012.699781
Tungohan E. and Banerjee R. 2015 After the Live-in Caregiver Program: Filipina caregivers’ experiences of graduated and uneven citizenship Canadian Ethnic Studies 47 1 87 -105 https://doi.org/10.1353/ces.2015.0008
Vahabi M. and Wong J. P.-H. 2017 Caught between a rock and a hard place: Mental health of migrant live-in caregivers in Canada BMC Public Health 17 1 498 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4431-4
Vallarta M. T. 2020 Toward a Filipinx method: Queer of color critique and QTGNC mobilization in Mark Aguhar’s poetics The Velvet Light Trap 86 1 37 -48
Wells L., Hurlock D., Antonio M., Lantion V., Abboud R., Claussen R., and Lorenzetti L. 2013 A context of domestic violence: Learnings for prevention from the Calgary Filipino community International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies 1 147 -165
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health
Volume 41 • Number 4 • October 2022
Pages: 54 - 66
History
Version of record online: 21 December 2022
Key Words
Mots-clés
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Other Metrics
Citations
Cite As
Christa Sato, Ferdinand Espina, David Este, and Ilyan Ferrer. 2022. “If There’s One Bad Apple, It Affects All of Us”: Filipino-Canadian Men’s Cultural Perspectives on Mental Health, Mental Illness and Stigma. Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health.
41(4): 54-66. https://doi.org/10.7870/cjcmh-2022-031
Export Citations
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.
There are no citations for this item
View Options
Get Access
Login options
Check if you access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Subscribe
Click on the button below to subscribe to Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health
