Cultural Influences in Mental Health Help-seeking among Malaysian Family Caregivers

Previous research has found that ethnicity and culture play a significant role in the stress and coping process for family caregivers. There has been limited amount of research focusing on Malaysian families’ mental health concerns, yet some emerging evidence suggests that the caregiver’s experience of living with the mentally ill showed some differences associated with the caregiver’s place of dwelling and ethnic background. The purpose of this article is to describe the experience of the help-seeking process and cultural coping strategy utilised by Malaysian families in dealing with mental health issues. In this study, a purposive sample of 24 family caregivers was interviewed to explore the caregivers’ help-seeking process and their coping strategies in reducing caregiving stress. Transcribed data were analysed using the qualitative framework-analysis technique. The findings of this study indicated that family caregivers still believe in supernatural and mystical factors when describing their relatives’ mental illness. They used coping mechanisms based on religious and cultural beliefs as a vital strategy for managing the cultural issues associated with mental illness due to the limited mental health resources that are available in their community. All these findings provide future research directions to better understand the interaction between culture and mental health, as well as mental health care policies to address potential family and community social problems in the help-seeking process to cope with the stress of caregiving.