Pathways to mental health services among inhabitants of a Mexican village

The purpose of this article is to provide a description of the pathways to the utilization of mental health services among rural Mexicans in a village with a long-standing tradition of male labor migration to the United States. The authors developed a model of pathways to mental health service utilization on the basis of ethnographic field notes ann;in-depth interviews with 21 villagers who were "potential immigrants." The model describes five sequential help-seeking strategies that townspeople with mental health problem commonly follow to relieve the pyschological and physical symptoms associated with their condition. The applications of the findings include the design of sensitive programs for the migratory population that riot only incorporates but maximizes pre-existing culture-specific individual and community resources.