CHAPTER 2

Culture Counts: The Influence of Culture and Society on Mental Health, Mental Illness

Demographic Trends

The United States is undergoing a major demographic transformation in racial and ethnic composition of its population. In 1990, 23 percent of U.S. adults and 31 percent of children were from racial and ethnic minority groups (Hollmann, 1993). In 25 years, it is projected that about 40 percent of adults and 48 percent of children will be from racial and ethnic minority groups (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000; Lewit & Baker, 1994). While these changes bring with them the enormous richness of diverse cultures, significant changes are needed in the mental health system to meet the associated challenges, a topic addressed in Chapter 7.

Diversity within Racial and Ethnic Groups

The four most recognized racial and ethnic minority groups are themselves quite diverse. For instance, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders include at least 43 separate subgroups who speak over 100 languages. Hispanics are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central and South American, or other Hispanic heritage (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). American Indian/Alaskan Natives consist of more than 500 tribes with different cultural traditions, languages, and ancestry. Even among African Americans, diversity has recently increased as black immigrants arrive from the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. Some members of these subgroups have largely acculturated or assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, whereas others speak English with difficulty and interact almost exclusively with members of their own ethnic group.

Growth Rates

African Americans had long been the country’s largest ethnic minority group. However, over the past decade, they have grown by just 13 percent to 34.7 million people. In contrast, higher birth and immigration rates led Hispanics to grow by 56 percent, to 35.3 million people, while the whites grew just 1 percent from 209 million to 212 million. According to 2000 census figures, Hispanics have replaced African Americans as the second largest ethnic group after whites (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001).

Hispanics grew faster than any other ethnic minority group in terms of the actual number of individuals and the rate of population growth. The group with the second highest rate of population growth was Asian Americans, who in the 2000 census were counted separately from Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders. Because of immigration, the Asian American population grew 40.7 percent to 10.6 million people, and this growth is projected to continue throughout the century (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001).

American Indians and Alaska Natives surged between 38 and 50 percent over each of the decades from the 1960s through the 1980s. However, during the 1990s, the rate of growth was slightly slower (19%). Even so, the rate is still greater than that for the general population. One factor accounting for this higher-than-average growth rate is an increase in the number of people who now identify themselves as American Indian or Alaska Native. The current size of the American Indian and Alaska Native population is just under 1 percent of the total U.S. population, or about 2.5 million people. This number nearly doubles, however, when including individuals who identify as being American Indian and Alaska Native as well as one or more other races (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001).

The numbers of ethnic minority children and youth are increasing most rapidly. Between 1995 and 2015, the numbers of black youth are expected to increase by 19 percent, American Indian and Alaska Native youth by 17 percent, Hispanic youth by 59 percent, and Asian and Pacific Islander youth by 74 percent. During the same period, the white youth population is expected to increase by 3 percent (Snyder & Sickmund, 1999).

Geographic Distribution

Until the 1960s, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans were geographically isolated. Before then, American Indians lived primarily on reservations to which the government assigned them. Few Asian Americans lived outside California, Hawaii, Washington, and New York City. Latinos resided primarily in the southwestern border States, New York City, and a few midwestern industrial cities (Harrison & Bennett, 1995).

Today, although they are not evenly distributed, members of each of the four major racial and ethnic minority groups reside throughout the United States. The western States are the most ethnically diverse in the United States, and they are home to many Latinos, Asian Americans, and American Indians. In the Midwest, which is less ethnically diverse, over 85 percent of the population is white, and most of the remainder is black. This proportion has remained relatively unchanged since the 1970s.

Although the Nation as a whole is becoming more ethnically diverse, this diversity remains relatively concentrated in a few States and large metropolitan areas. In general, minorities are more likely than whites to live in urban areas. In 1997, 88 percent of minorities lived in cities and their surrounding areas, compared to 77 percent of whites. American Indians/Alaska Natives and African Americans are the only minority groups with any consider-able rural population. (U.S. Census Bureau, 1999).

Impact of Immigration Laws

During the last century, U.S. immigration laws alternately closed and opened the doors of immigration to different foreign populations. For example, the 1924 Immigration Act established the National Origins System, which restricted annual immigration from any foreign country to 2 percent of that country’s population living in the United States, as counted in the census of 1890. Since most of the foreign-born counted in the 1890 census were from northern and western European countries, the 1924 Immigration Act reinforced patterns of white immigration and staved off immigration from other areas, including Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Until the 1960s, approximately two–thirds of all legal immigrants to the United States were from Europe and Canada. The Immigration Act of 1965 replaced the National Origins System and allowed an annual immigration quota of 20,000 individuals from each country in the Eastern Hemisphere. The Act also gave preference to individuals in certain occupations. The effect was striking: Immigration from Asia skyrocketed from 6 percent of all immigrants in the 1950s to 37 percent by the 1980s. Yet another provision of the Act supported family reunification and gave preference to people with relatives in the United States, one factor behind the growth in immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries (U.S. Census Bureau, 1999). Over this same period of time, the percentage of immigrants from Europe and Canada fell from 68 percent to 12 percent (U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1999).

In the past 20 years, immigration has led to a shift in the racial and ethnic composition of the United States not witnessed since the late 17th century, when black slaves became part of the labor force in the South (Muller, 1993). Though this wave of immigration is similar to the surge of immigration that occurred in the early part of this century, a critical difference is in the countries of origin. In the early 1900s, immigrants primarily came from Europe and Canada, while recent immigration is primarily from Asian and Latin American countries.

Overall, the racial and ethnic makeup of the United States has changed more rapidly since 1965 than during any other period in history. The reform in immigration policy in 1965, the increase in self-identification by ethnic minorities, and the slowing of the country’s birth rates, especially among non-Hispanic white Americans, have all led to an increasing, and increasingly diverse, racial and ethnic minority population in the United States.