Asha

ASHA:Using Participatory Methods to Develop an Asset-building Mental Health Intervention for Bangladeshi Immigrant Women Alison Karasz, PhD, Sumithra Raghavan, PhD, Viraj Patel, MD, MPH, Moumita Zaman, Laila Akhter, MA, and Mahbhooba Kabita What Is the Purpose of This Study? • This article describes a successful partnership between clinicians, researchers, activists, and members of the Bronx South Asian immigrant community. The team collaborated to design and implement a depression intervention for women that would synchronize with local concepts of distress and address concrete problems • The Action to Improve Self-esteem and Health through Asset Building (ASHA) program is a depression intervention designed by and for South Asian women immigrants. ASHA helps women to build psychological, social, and financial assets. • This article describes the development and preliminary test of the ASHA intervention. What Is the Problem? • Common mental disorder is highly prevalent among low-income immigrant women, yet few receive effective treatment. • This underuse is partly owing to a lack of conceptual synchrony between biopsychiatric theories underlying conventional mental health treatments and explanatory models of distress in community settings. What Are the Findings? • ASHA was effective in decreasing depression and increasing financial independence. • Using a culturally synchronous approach to psychological treatment may be effective in decreasing distress in immigrant populations. Who Should Care Most? • Mental health clinicians and researchers. • Providers who work with culturally diverse and/or immigrant populations. Recommendations for Action • Using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to addressing psychological distress may be effective in defining a common understanding of an illness problem, its causes, and its cures. • A true CBPR approach requires that cultural representations of illness should not be regarded as a deficit—mere “folk beliefs” or a lack of “mental health literacy”—but as legitimate, culturally shaped understandings of distress and illness that reflect important social and economic realities. • Members of traditionally underserved groups may be more likely to engage in and benefit from an intervention that responds to their indigenous concepts of distress. [End Page 469] • Interventions that include opportunities for asset building or English language education can help women to mobilize their resources to seek work and further education, which in turn improves their self-confidence and overall mood. • The program that resulted from our collaborative efforts may also serve as a model that may be relevant in other community settings. [End Page 470] Alison Karasz Department of Family and Social Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine Sumithra Raghavan Department of Psychology, College of Mount Saint Vincent Viraj Patel Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine Moumita Zaman SAPNA-NYC Laila Akhter SAPNA-NYC Mahbhooba Kabita SAPNA-NYC Copyright © 2015 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Asha · Community-based participatory research · Intervention (counseling · Mental health · Participatory action research · Psychiatry · Sociology · Medicine · Mental Health Treatment and Access · Migration, Health and Trauma · Nursing · Psychology

• The Asha (Hope) Project

  Open Access•Alison Karasz, Shabnam Anne et al.•International Journal of…•2021

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