Reducing Mental Health Disparities by Increasing the Personal Relevance of Interventions

One of the most persistent health disparities is the underutilization of mental health services by people of color. Neither evidence-based treatments (universal focus), nor culturally-adapted treatments (group focus), have reduced these disparities. We propose the Personal Relevance of Psychotherapy (PROP) model that integrates universal, group, and individual dimensions to determine the personal relevance of interventions. A cultural example of personal relevance among people of East Asian ancestry involves “face” (i.e., one’s prestige and position in society) which may moderate treatment outcomes. Pragmatic intervention approaches focused on helping individuals cope with specific external problems, as compared to managing a “personal” disease, can effectively “restore” face. Thus, social problem-solving interventions may be more personally relevant to many people of East Asian ancestry than approaches that are internally- focused. In addition, we posit that social neuroscience can offer unique opportunities above and beyond self-report measures when assessing the impact of PROP and the personal relevance of interventions for diverse populations. Our preliminary evidence upon testing this hypothesis indicated that among Asian Americans, exposure to problem-solving therapy content elicited significantly greater neural activity in brain areas associated with personal relevance as compared to exposure to cognitive-behavioral therapy content. Identifying personally-relevant interventions has the potential to reduce mental health disparities by increasing engagement with mental health services for diverse groups. The increased client engagement produced by personally-relevant interventions also has the potential to make mental health services more effective for diverse groups.