Culture has a huge influence on how people perceive and manage psychological disorders. Being able to successfully treat someone with a mental illness depends largely on what they consider normal in their own culture. In Western cultures, we believe that going to a counselor to talk about our emotions or individual problems and/or getting medication to relieve our mental illness is the best way to overcome and treat it, but in many ways other cultures this may not be the case. either the case. In particular, Western and Asian cultures vary in how they treat psychological disorders. In this article I will discuss how Asian and Western cultures are similar and different in how they view psychological disorders, treatments and likelihood of getting treatment, culture-bound disorders, and how to overcome differences between cultures for optimal treatments. Asian cultures make up a large portion of the world's population. It is therefore important to be able to understand their way of managing psychological disorders. The way most Asian cultures view mental illness is very different from the way Western cultures view mental illness. One study showed that “Asian Americans experience greater implicit stigma regarding mental illness than Caucasian Americans” (Cheon & Chiao, 2012). One reason for this is that Asian cultures are more likely to attribute mental illness to a supernatural cause. This could include punishments from God or their ancestors who displeased them with bad behavior or they may believe that mental illness could be the result of possession by an evil spirit. These types of beliefs lead to stronger stigma toward mental illness in Asian cultures. Since they believe it may be caused by ...... middle of paper ......age of all their treatment options. Another very important thing to do is to train mental health professionals on different aspects of Asian culture. Being aware of the Asian perspective and how they traditionally treat mental illness is extremely important when treating people from Asian cultures. Finally, being open to using modern counseling and drug therapies along with traditional treatment methods is a great way to overcome the challenges of treating Asians. In conclusion, Asian and Western cultures have very different ways of perceiving and managing psychological disorders. They both have their own way of looking at mental illness, treating it, there are culture-bound syndromes and, more importantly, there are ways that can help overcome these differences and best help sufferers. psychological disorders..