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This study investigated Korean Protestants’ beliefs about psychological services (BAPS) and their associations with religiosity and church climates. Using responses of 254 Protestants from 18 different churches in South Korea, we employed three multilevel analyses to explore whether participants’ etiology beliefs, religious coping, and perceived church climates in relation to psychological services were associated with the subscales of the BAPS scale: Expertness, Stigma Tolerance, and Intent to Seek Psychological Help. The results indicated that attributions of mental illness to psychological factors were associated with stronger beliefs in the expertise of psychological services. In terms of religious coping, the deferring style was negatively associated with stigma tolerance, the self-directing style was negatively associated with expertness and stigma tolerance, and the collaborative style was positively associated with intent to seek help. Finally, church climates related to psychological services, which we considered a church-level factor, were associated with all BAPS subscales. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

International students make up 5.5% of all university students in the United States. In addition, international students consist of approximately 4% of the student population in Christian higher education. Although there is a significant number of international students enrolled in faith-based institutions, this population remains underrepresented in multicultural psychological literature. Thus, applying the intrapersonal-interpersonal-spiritual framework, we interviewed 15 international students from a Christian university to investigate their unique and shared experiences with the general international student population in the United States. The Consensual Qualitative Research method (CQR) was employed, and seven principal domains were identified: (a) religiousness, (b) reactions toward international students, (c) social support and acceptance, (d) hopes and expectations, (e) cultural adaptation, (f) cultural differences, and (g) international student identity. Similar themes to those present in the existing international student literature were established, but differential themes related to religiousness were discovered as well. Implications for Christian campuses are discussed.

Insufficient research has compared the impact of subtle and overt discrimination on somatic symptom disorder (SSD) among young adults with immigrant backgrounds in South Korea, a country that is becoming increasingly racially and ethnically diverse. Therefore, this study seeks to examine this. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in January 2022 involving 328 young adults aged 25 to 34 years who had at least one foreign-born parent or were foreign-born immigrants. We used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with SSD as the dependent variable. The results showed that subtle and overt discrimination were positively associated with SSD among young immigrant adults. Subtle discrimination seems more strongly related to SSD among Korean-born immigrant adults (N = 198; beta = 0.171, P < .05) than foreign-born immigrant young adults (N = 130; beta = 0.031, P > .05). This result partially supported the theory that both forms of discrimination were differently related to increased SSD tendencies by place of birth.

Limited research examines how people of color view Jesus’s race and the influence of culture on such a view. We investigated the relationship between views of Jesus’s race and implicit bias when viewing images of Jesus (e.g., positive words associated with White Jesus, negative words associated with non-White Jesus) among Asian American students ( N = 103) from a Christian university. We predicted that (a) a small percentage of participants would view Jesus as White; (b) participants would demonstrate implicit bias; and (c) beliefs about Jesus’s race, racial colorblindness, ethnic identity, and internalized model minority stereotype would predict implicit bias. Participants were more likely to view Jesus as non-White but favor images of White Jesus over images of non-White Jesus, especially participants who endorsed White Jesus. Racial colorblindness was associated with beliefs about Jesus’s race and implicit bias. These findings highlight how inaccurately portraying prominent figures’ race as White perpetuates White standards such that race is obliviated and biases are internalized.

In this study, we investigated empirical associations between others’ stigma regarding seeking psychological help (predictor), self-stigma regarding seeking help (mediator), loss of face concerns (moderator), and professional help-seeking attitudes (outcome) among 485 South Korean college students. We also explored the dimensionality of close others’ stigma and public stigma using a bifactor analysis. We recruited participants from several universities in South Korea. They completed an online survey containing demographic questions and study measures. Bifactor analysis results indicated that close others’ stigma and public stigma may be better treated as a unidimensional construct (i.e., others’ stigma). Mediation and moderated mediation analyses indicated that others’ stigma predicted self-stigma, which in turn predicted help-seeking attitudes. Furthermore, this mediation model was moderated by loss of face, in that as loss of face increased, the negative indirect effect of others’ stigma on help-seeking attitudes through self-stigma became weaker. We discuss implications for research and practice.

Despite the prevalent belief to the contrary, Asian Americans are susceptible to experiencing contemporary forms of racism and their deleterious influence on mental health. The present study is an empirical investigation of Asian Americans' experience of racism, its association with mental health, the different religious coping strategies that might be utilized, and the mediating roles of religious coping in a sample of Christian Asian American college students. The current study revisits and extends a prior study (P. Y. Kim, Kendall, & Webb, 2015) by using a more nuanced conceptualization and assessment of religious coping, examining religious coping as a mediator instead of a moderator, and examining mental health outcomes multidimensionally (anxiety, depression, and well-being). Results indicated that Asian American participants tended to rely on certain types of religious coping over others, and that some highly endorsed religious coping strategies had a deleterious effect on mental health (e.g., positively associated with racism and distress symptoms), whereas other endorsed strategies had a facilitative role on mental health (e.g., positively associated with racism, but inversely associated with psychological distress). The findings point to the complex roles religious coping might play in the association between racism and the mental health of Asian American college students.