Pandemic-related cultural peer support group benefits Asian Americans
A cultural-based peer support group appeared to benefit Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to study findings presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting.
“We are a community education program serving Asian American families,” Eunice Yuen, M.D., PhD, of Yale School of Medicine’s Child Study Center, said about the Yale Compassionate Home, Action Together (CHATogether) intervention during a press briefing. “We started around when the pandemic began, and we realized the unique emotional distress shared among Asian American families, such as family conflict and xenophobic attacks.”
Yuen and colleagues sought to evaluate whether the Yale CHATogether intervention could offer an effective peer support group model for its participants during the COVID-19 pandemic. The intervention initially aimed to assist Asian American families in bolstering their communication skills to improve mental wellness via theater vignettes but became a pandemic-related peer support group. Its members partake in weekly check-in meetings in which they co-construct child-parent conflict vignettes that incorporate their personal experiences, with a focus on working through internal conflicts and achieving a sense of agency through positive contributions to address these problems. The intervention also addressed cross-cultural challenges, Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ issues. Yuen and colleagues evaluated peer support outcomes using a qualitative focus group analysis among 10 participants who were in the group since the pandemic began.
Preliminary results showed the intervention positively affected participants’ mental health and well-being in four significant ways, which were as follows:
- it provided a safe and supportive environment that strengthened members’ connections and increased their sense of belonging, thus encouraging engagement;
- it provided structural consistency and stability via regular meetings and consistent group functions, with weekly meetings having allowed for a sense of control and hope during the uncertainty of the pandemic lockdown;
- adapting meetings to virtual platforms led to group members showing inherent benefits linked to a growth mindset and cognitive flexibility when addressing challenges; and
- it supported health coping skills via sublimation and altruism.
“Some of our future directions include investigating the validity and effectiveness of this model, as well as expanding to a larger group, other minorities, school educators and medical education for trainees and medical students,” Yuen said.
Reference:
Yuen E, et al. Poster 4145. Presented at: American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting; May 1-3, 2021 (virtual meeting).