Previous research has indicated that implementation of federal welfare has discouraged the use of publicly funded health services by legal immigrants. To date, there have been no studies examining the impact of federal welfare reform on low-income immigrants' access to publicly funded mental health services. The proposed study has three main objectives: To determine the number of low-income Asian immigrants who received publicly funded mental health services in San Francisco City and County between 1993 and 1999, the number of utilizations of mental health services, the types of services provided, and how their utilization differs from that of a comparison group of Caucasians; To understand the barriers of accessing publicly funded mental health services faced by low-income Asian immigrants; and To assess whether publicly funded mental health services are provided on an equitable basis to low-income Asian immigrants in San Francisco City and County. Archival data will be analyzed from San Francisco City and County Department of Community Mental Health Services to assess changes before and after the Federal Welfare Reform occurred. Focus groups will be conducted with mental health services for low-income Asian immigrants to understand the barriers of accessing mental health services for low-income Asian immigrants. These focus groups will include Chinese, Filipino and Vietnamese immigrants, in different regions of the city and county. Data from these focus groups will allow us to determine whether mental health services are provided on an equitable basis. Both quantitative and qualitative methods will be used to analyze data collected from the Department of Mental Health and from the focus groups. These data will be useful in directing mental health providers working with ethnic minorities. This research also has the potential to make substantive theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of ethnic minorities use of mental health services.
