Counseling 
the Asian Diaspora
a
The George Washington University, Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Introduction
• The past decade has experienced a surge in Asian-
American storytelling with more movies, TV shows
and novels telling the non-Asian general public
about the Asian-American experience, showing the
nuances of acculturation, enculturation, and issues
relating to mental health. It is critical to note that
these representations are still a drop in the bucket
regarding the population as a whole
• The Asian Diaspora consists of members that have
heritage in countries from the Asian continent that
includes various ethnicities. However, many studies
focusing on general populations will include
participant descriptors as “Asian/Asian-American”,
which is an over-generalization and limits the
understanding in counseling and psychology in
Western literature (Museus & Park, 2015).
Purpose
• The purpose of this content analysis is to
understand the state of research regarding mental
health of the Asian diaspora over the past decade
(2010-2019). This content analysis reviews types of
research, research methodology, populations studied,
and content within the research.  covered research have been left out due to journal
Methods
• This content analysis focuses on articles based on
empirical research published in peer-reviewed
journals from 2010 - 2019. The research team
investigated two fields of research in psychology
and counseling. Then we used PsychINFO &
PsychARTCLES as our main search engine.
• Search terms included: acculturaltion, Asian
Diaspora, Asian American, mental health,
counseling, international students, etc.
• There were 44 articles in the primary results. We
refined the results to only include the Asian diaspora
in culturally western countries, referring to Europe
and the Americas. We retained a total of 34 articles
that had samples consisting of the Asian diaspora
population and are informed the fields of counseling
and psychology.
• The research team conducted a descriptive analysis
of the methodologies, ethnicities presented in the
articles, and the journal affiliation of the articles. We
also individually analyzed the articles for
topics/themes. 
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Bagmi Das, PhD, LMFT & Qi Chen
Results and Findings Implications for Counseling
• Barriers to counseling include: Discrimination,
Content analysis presented a review of the pee-reviewed research on the Asian Diaspora’s help-seeking behaviors within the fields of
counseling and psychology between the years of 2010 and 2019. This section begins with a review of the articles by journal and field and Language, and stigma
then moves to discuss methodological trends for research and then content within the literature. • Information and education about mental health and
counseling could lead to more cultural acceptance in
• Journal and Field trends   Asian diaspora
• Uniting physical and mental health can help
13 articles are affiliated with American Psychological Association. Only two of them are affiliated with American Counseling Association.
Others affiliations include Suicidology, Orthopsychiatry, etc. with buy-in
• Need for exploration of identity as a member of the
• Methodological trends diaspora  
Most of the studies, 22 out of 35 (64.7%), presented in the articles are quantitative studies using questionnaire and scales as their
measure in the research. 4 articles presented qualitative studies that mainly conducted phenomenological interviews. There were 5 articles Implications for Research
in which a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used in the research studies. 3 articles were reviews of relevant • Ethnicities need to be described and delineated in
research studies or books. There are also 5 comparative studies meaning that there were comparison groups of participants of different future research
ethnicities recruited and studied, using either questionnaires or interviews or both. • Underrepresented ethnicities should be a focus of
new research
• Interrater Reliability: 61.8% • International Students/Immigrants/Generational
Status needs to be described
• Ethnicity and Population trends • Need more qualitative research to understand depth
 The four Asian ethnicities that are most studied in the research are Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Indian. These include the participants of diaspora experience
living in their country of origins and those who are in their current resident countries if they are immigrants. We’ve also presented
international students as a separate group of population because of the increasing number of international students in the USA and that
Limitations
there are several studies looked at this population. Only a few studies had participants representing other Asian ethnicities including
Vietnamese, Mongolian, Pakistani, etc.  • Selection of literature through database needs to
take into account the selection process for the
database itself. It is possible that articles that
relationships with the database.
• Some research studies presented the sample
population as Asian American instead of
differentiating the specific ethnicities, resulting in
loss of counting in specific ethnicities in our study.
Also, with international students being counted as a
separate group of population, we are unsure what
ethnicities are presented.
• Majority studies examined participants from China,
• Content and Themes Trends
Korea, Japan and India where other parts of Asians
Theme topics were determined and categorized into 6 groups by the research team summarizing the literature reviewed in this research. were not looked at in most studies
“Identity” represents understanding the language and acculturation of Asian diaspora. “Psychotherapy” includes different themes such as
one’s likelihood to seek help, social stigma towards mental health counseling, understanding of mental health illness, choice of mental
health professionals, supervision, intervention and medical model impact. Interpersonal dynamics refer to impact from education, parenting Contact Information
and discrimination against Asian population. Psychometrics, protective factors and balance were also identified as theme topics in our
research. Each topic may be covered in different articles. However, it is novel to see the trend of what topics are more often discussed in Bagmi Das, PhD, LMFT
the literature. Email: bagmidas@gwu.edu 
Qi Chen, MEd
Email: kikicq@gwu.gmail.edu
2134 G St NW, Washington, DC 20052
Graduate School of Education and Human
Development
The George Washington University
*References available upon request