Psychotherapy Utilization and Presenting Concerns among International Asian and Asian American Students in a University Counseling Center

Abstract

ABSTRACT Limited psychological research has disaggregated the experiences of Asian American (AA) from international Asian (IA) college students seeking psychotherapy. When combined, important differences between these groups are overlooked. We examined archival data collected from AA, IA, and European American (EA) students at a large, Western, university counseling center. Results indicated no significant differences between groups related to maximum number of psychotherapy sessions attended or likelihood of treatment discontinuance. However, we found significant differences between these groups on a number of items related to presenting concerns and to severity of presenting distress, with IA students presenting with the most distress, followed by AA, and finally EA. We also found significant differences between groups in treatment improvement, with EA students experiencing most improvement, followed by AA, and IA students. Future research should continue to investigate how specific concerns and experiences of AA and IA students are similar and different.