History of Asian American Psychology

Abstract

An overview of the history of Asian American psychology is provided by reviewing the context for the development of the field as well as the early founding of the Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA). The presidents of AAPA as well as key events and conferences are noted. The involvement of AAPA leaders in national mental health policies and activities are reviewed. The substantive areas of Asian American psychology and the education and training of Asian American psychologists are also discussed. The article ends with some comments about the future of Asian American psychology.

Full text

History of Asian American Psychology
Frederick T. L. Leong
Michigan State University
Sumie Okazaki
New York University
An overview of the history of Asian American psychology is provided by reviewing the context for the
development of the field as well as the early founding of the Asian American Psychological Association
(AAPA). The presidents of AAPA as well as key events and conferences are noted. The involvement of
AAPA leaders in national mental health policies and activities are reviewed. The substantive areas of
Asian American psychology and the education and training of Asian American psychologists are also
discussed. The article ends with some comments about the future of Asian American psychology.
Keywords: Asian Americans, history, ethnic minorities, APA, AAPA
The present article seeks to provide an overview of the history
of Asian American Psychology.
1
There is only one other existing
document to our knowledge that has chronicled the history of
Asian American Psychology (Leong, 1995), which recorded the
history and accomplishments of the Asian American Psychological
Association (AAPA) to that date. Much has happened in the field
of Asian American psychology since then. The current article
summarizes the major events in Asian American psychology from
1972 to 2008, which includes but also goes beyond the achieve-
ments of the AAPA. In providing this historical overview, this
article also relies on significant portions of the report written by
Leong (1995), which was an in-house association monograph that
was not widely circulated.
We begin by setting a historical context for Asian American
psychology. We provide a brief overview of the Asian American
population demographics and major trends in immigration as well
as a note on the history and development of Asian American
studies as a scholarly discipline. We then chronicle the founding
and the development of the Asian American Psychological Asso-
ciation, the primary professional organization for Asian American
psychologists. Next, we review the substantive areas of research in
Asian American psychology and the major developments in prac-
tice and public policy concerning the mental health of Asian
American populations. We end with an overview of the develop-
ments in the education and training of professionals in Asian
American psychology, with a look toward the future of the field.
Brief Immigration History and Major Population Trends
In the 2000 U.S. census, there were 11.9 million U.S. residents
who reported their “race” as full or part Asian (or 4.2% of the U.S.
population). The Asian American population has seen a rapid
increase in the past few decades. Whereas Asian Americans ac-
counted for only one half of 1% of the total U.S. population in
1960 (Takaki, 1989), the number of U.S. residents of Asian an-
cestry in 2005 was estimated to be 13.5 million or 5% of the total
U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005). Of these, 8.7 million
(or 64%) were born in Asia; thus the population largely comprises
immigrant individuals and families.
Immigration History
As with other immigrant populations, Asian American pop-
ulation patterns are dynamic and subject to U.S. immigration
policy. Historically, the U.S. immigration policy has deter-
mined the size of the Asian American population as well as its
ethnic composition, socioeconomic welfare, and the rights and
privileges accorded to this group. For psychology, an under-
standing of the history of immigration legislation—particularly
as it targeted various Asian groups for exclusion and discrim-
ination on the basis of race—provides a critical context in
which we strive to understand the contemporary experiences of
Asian American individuals and communities. For this reason,
we give an abbreviated history of immigration and population
pattern shifts of Asians in the United States. Those interested in
more detailed accounts of Asian American history are referred
to Chan (1991) and Takaki (1989).
Starting in the 1830s, the Chinese began to arrive in large
numbers as contract laborers in Hawaii’s sugar plantations, fol-
lowed by the Japanese laborers in the 1880s, and Korean and
Filipino laborers at the turn of the century. With the annexation of
California in 1848 and the westward expansion of the railroads,
coupled with the gold rush, the Chinese laborers as well as mer-
chants migrated to the U.S. mainland starting in the 1840s. By
1880, there were an estimated 124,000 Chinese who had immi-
grated to the mainland United States. By then, the Chinese were
1
Until 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau aggregated statistics for Asian
Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. However, because of
limited availability of psychological literature on Native Hawaiians and
Pacific Islanders and because of the vast cultural and historical differences
between Asian American and Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations,
this discussion is limited only to the history and activities of psychological
studies of Asian Americans.
Frederick T. L. Leong, Department of Psychology, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, and Sumie Okazaki, Department of Applied
Psychology, New York University.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Frederick
T. L. Leong, Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, Psy-
chology Building, East Lansing, MI 48824. E-mail: fleong@msu.edu
Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology © 2009 American Psychological Association
2009, Vol. 15, No. 4, 352–362 1099-9809/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0016443
352

the largest racial minority in the west and viewed hostilely by
others as unwelcome economic competitors. As early as 1854,
Chinese in America were met with legal discrimination, as in the
California Supreme Court ruling on People v. Hall, denying Chi-
nese the right to testify in courts. There were a series of other legal
decisions in California that denied Chinese various rights and
protections, culminating in the 1882 federal legislation Chinese
Exclusion Act, which suspended immigration of Chinese laborers
for 10 years and declared them ineligible for citizenship.
Such treatment of the Chinese by the host American society,
with an eager recruitment of laborers by large businesses followed
by societal and legal discrimination and eventual exclusion, was
also seen for the Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and Indian migrants
that followed the Chinese exclusion. The anti-Asian sentiments
that continued to face the various Asian immigrant groups were
paralleled by various legislations, protocols, and judicial rulings
that barred immigration and greatly limited the rights of Asians
already in the United States. For example, the Chinese Exclusion
Act in 1882 suspended immigration of Chinese laborers for 10
years. This act was renewed in 1892 and in 1902 and made
permanent in 1904. The 1907 Gentleman’s Agreement between
Japan and the United States established a diplomatic protocol in
which Japan agreed to stop issuing passports to Japanese laborers.
California’s 1913 Alien Land Law prohibited sales of agricultural
lands to “aliens ineligible for citizenship,” and this in effect barred
Japanese and other immigrants from owning land. The 1917 Im-
migration Act established an “Asiatic Barred Zone” that included
India, so as to prevent further Indian immigration. The 1922
Supreme Court ruling on Ozawa v. United States and 1923 ruling
on United States v. Thind denied requests for naturalization by a
Japanese immigrant and an Indian immigrant, respectively, be-
cause they were not “White.” The 1924 Immigration Act excluded
all immigration of aliens ineligible for citizenship, which affected
virtually all Asian immigrants except for those from the Phillip-
pines (who at the time were not officially aliens because the
Philippines was a U.S. territory at the time.)The 1936 Tydings-
McDuffe Act established the creation of a Philippine common-
wealth, thus ending the Filipinos’ status as U.S. nationals, and set
the annual Filipino immigration quota at 50. Thus in this manner,
the doors of immigration were closed for each of the major Asian
groups in the first part of the 20th century.
It was not until World War II— during which those of Japa-
nese ancestry, regardless of their citizenship status, were in-
terned in camps—that some of the exclusionary immigration
and naturalization laws began to be repealed. Chinese exclusion
law and restriction to naturalization were repealed in 1943,
Indian and Filipino immigrants’ right to naturalize was granted in
1946, and all racial prerequisites for naturalization were eliminated
in 1952. However, it was not until after 1965, with the passage of
the Hart-Celler Immigration and Naturalization Act in 1965—
which replaced restrictive per-country quotas for immigration with
liberal hemispheric quotas, placed a priority for high-skill workers
(e.g., engineers, scientists, and medical workers), and gave pref-
erences to family reunifications—that the Asian American popu-
lation began the fast pace of growth that continues to this day.
Finally, in the 1970s after the Vietnam conflict and the fall of
Saigon, the United States began admitting large numbers of refu-
gees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
Population Trends
Since the early days of Asian immigration, the Asian American
population has been concentrated on the West Coast and in Ha-
waii. In the 1960 census, when Asian Americans composed 0.5%
of the total U.S. population, 71% of them were living in California
or Hawaii. By the 1980 census, when Asian Americans composed
1.4% of the U.S. population, only 57% were living in the West.
The federal government’s refugee resettlement policies, in which
Southeast Asian refugees were resettled across the country, helped
to increase the dispersion of the Asian American population. In
2000, 48% of Asians still lived in the West, although the South
experienced the greatest rate of increase in Asian American pop-
ulation.
Along with the geographic diversification of Asian Americans
over the last half century, the ethnic composition of Asian Amer-
icans also saw dramatic shifts. Whereas Japanese Americans com-
posed the largest group in 1960, accounting for 50% of Asian
Americans then, Japanese were only 8% of Asian Americans by
2000. Chinese, Filipino, and Asian Indians were the largest groups
of Asian Americans in 2000, followed by Vietnamese and Korean
Americans.
The dominant image of Asian Americans as a model minority
group with high economic and educational attainments and low
rates of social problems has been sustained and perpetuated by
both the mainstream media and members of Asian American
communities. The model minority thesis first emerged in the
mid-1960s with the popular media’s attention to the high educa-
tional achievement of Asian Americans. Sociologist William Pe-
tersen’s (1966) article in the New York Times Magazine, entitled
“Success Story, Japanese American Style,” was the first to cast
Asian Americans as a model minority, and this piece was followed
by a succession of media coverage that similarly lauded the image
of Asian Americans as a hardworking, noncomplaining minority
group in contrast to other minority groups.
2
Coming at the height
of the civil rights movement in the nation, Asian American social
activists and scholars argued that Asian Americans were being
touted as the model minority to discredit and discourage the
protests and demands for social justice of African Americans and
Latinos at the time (Suzuki, 2002).
In addition to questioning the ideological motivations behind the
perpetuation of the model minority thesis, scholars have also
questioned the empirical bases of this image. When aggregated
across various ethnic groups, demographic profiles appear to sup-
port the notion of Asian Americans as a high-achieving group. For
example, the 2000 census showed that Asian Americans have the
highest median family income of all races (at $59,324 in compar-
ison with the national average of $50,046) and were more likely
than other racial groups to have obtained a bachelor’s, master’s,
professional, or doctoral degree (e.g., 44.1% of Asian Americans
had obtained at least a bachelor’s degree in comparison with
28.1% of Whites). However, the Asian American population also
tends to show a wide range on many of these structural variables.
For example, even though the median family income of Asian
Americans is higher than the national average, the poverty rate of
2
Also according to Chan (1991); Suzuki’s (1977) article in Amerasia
journal was the first critique of the model minority thesis.
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SPECIAL ISSUE: ASIAN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY

10.8% was higher than that of non-Hispanic Whites (at 7.5%) in
2000. Strikingly, noncitizen immigrant Asian Americans had a
poverty rate of 19.4%. Low wage and contract labor (e.g., in the
garment industry, janitorial services, and food service industry) are
common among many newly arrived Asian American immigrants
with limited English fluency. And while Asian American house-
holds may have a higher median family income than the national
average, they also tend to live in geographical areas with high real
estate prices (such as Hawaii, California, and New York) and have
more family members contributing to the family income.
There is also a wide range in the educational attainment among
various Asian American groups. For example, the 1990 census
showed that while there was high rate of college enrollment among
18- to 24-year-olds among Chinese (66.5%), Japanese (63.5%),
Asian Indian (61.9%), and Korean (60.3%) young adults, other
groups such as Hmong (31.7%) and Laotians (26.3%) showed a
lower rate than the national average rate of 34.4% for college
enrollment. Moreover, Pang, Kiang, and Pak (2004) argued that
Asian Americans’ performance on high-stakes tests is often mis-
understood. The failure rate on the state exam for Asian American
10th-graders in Massachusetts was 26% on English and 40% on
math—and even higher in school districts with high enrollment of
Cambodian and Vietnamese American students. In short, the ag-
gregate statistics that support the model minority image of Asian
Americans betray the wide variability within this population
group. However, despite an extensive literature contesting its
ideological and factual bases, the model minority thesis continues
to be a salient theme in both academic discourse and community
narratives. Prashad (2006) argued that the model minority thesis
continues to hold sway because the idea appeals to the upwardly
mobile segment of the Asian American community and with
scholars whose work on Asian Americans is premised on the
upwardly mobile class vision of a segment of Asian Americans.
Asian American Studies
The field of Asian American studies traces its origin in the late
1960s and early 1970s as a part of a larger social and political
movement to challenge the marginalization of Asians in the United
States and around the world. According to Omatsu (1994), the
Asian American movement began in parallel not with the initial
campaign for civil rights but with the later demand for Black
liberation, in the tradition of militant activism led by Malcolm X.
In this vein, Asian American studies arose out of activism in
academia in concert with the Third World student movements on
the campuses of the University of California, Berkeley, and San
Francisco State University and partly in reaction to the racism
displayed during American wars in Southeast Asia. Prashad (2005)
writes that ethnic studies—including Asian American studies—
emerged out of an antiracist, social justice tradition to legitimize
the scholarship of individuals and communities of color who had
been marginalized in academia. As such, ethnic studies recognized
that this new field of study needed the participation of the “com-
munity” in research as an active participant rather than simply as
objects of study and that an Asian American scholar aspires to
conduct action-oriented research that would influence the lives of
Asian Americans.
Although phrases such as militant activism and third world
struggle may not appear to describe the aims of contemporary
Asian American psychology today, it is important to note that
Asian American psychology also came into being during that era
of the Asian American movement and that the early thinkers were
greatly influenced by the tenor of the times. Indeed, one of the
earliest articles to be published in Asian American psychology by
S. Sue and D. W. Sue (1971), entitled “Chinese American Person-
ality and Mental Health,” did not appear in a psychology journal
but instead in the first year of the publication of the Amerasia
journal, the first Asian American Studies journal.
History of Asian American Psychology
Although there had been some limited psychological research
with Asian Americans prior to the late 1960s, the field of Asian
American psychology emerged in the era of the Civil Rights
movement alongside the start of Asian American studies. Table 1
shows the key events in Asian American psychology, embedded in
the timeline of events of significance in Asian American history.
Founding of the Asian American
Psychological Association
The Asian American Psychological Association was founded on
December 10, 1972, by a group of Asian American psychologists
and other mental health professionals in the San Francisco Bay
area. This group included Derald Sue, Stanley Sue, Roger Lum,
Marion Tin-Loy, and Tina Tong Yee, who met informally with
each other to exchange ideas and provide social support to each
other. With the leadership of Derald Sue, who became the first
president of the association, and a core group of active members,
the AAPA continued to grow over the years. From a handful of
active members in the founding, the organization grew quickly to
185 members in 1979. The AAPA’s membership figures have
stabilized in the recent decade, with the most recent figure con-
sisting of 500 members in 2005.
Over the past three decades, the association has been involved in
a series of activities to advance the knowledge base and concerns
of Asian Americans. From participating in the census advisory
committee regarding the classification of Asian groups in the 1980
U.S. census (B. Yee, personal communication, December 20,
2005), to pressing the American Psychological Association (APA)
to establish the Board of Minority Affairs (now Board of Ethnic
Minority Affairs; (R. True, personal communication, December
23, 2005), to fighting against the English-language-only move-
ment in California in (1986), the association has consistently
advocated on behalf of Asian American psychology and the wel-
fare of Asian Americans.
Table 2 lists the presidents of AAPA from 1972 to 2005.
Figure 1 shows the founders of AAPA. Some of the association
members have also achieved prominence in the APA’s gover-
nance. For example, Richard Suinn was one of the earlier chair-
persons of the APA Board of Ethnic Minority Affairs, served as a
member of the APA Board of Directors, and was the first Asian
American psychologist to serve as the president of the APA in
1999. Alice Chang has also served on the Board of Directors for
the APA. Other AAPA members have served as consultants in
various governmental agencies. For example, Stanley Sue directed
the training for the National Asian American Psychology Training
Center in San Francisco in 1980 and established and served as the
354
LEONG AND OKAZAKI

Director of the National Research Center on Asian American
Mental Health from 1988 to 2001 at the University of California,
Los Angeles, and the University of California, Davis. However,
the bulk of activities within the association have been focused
on the dual themes of (a) educating and training Asian American
psychologists and (b) improving mental health services to Asian
Americans. Most of the activities of the association have been
transacted through the journal and newsletter and the periodic
AAPA conventions scheduled during the day before the start of the
regular APA convention.
Key Events and Conferences
Within psychology, as with other specialties, the develop-
ment of the field has been marked by certain landmark confer-
ences. For example, the first national training conference on
clinical psychology was held in 1949 in Boulder, Colorado,
where the scientist–practitioner model of training was adopted
by the field. The first of these key conferences that help define
our field was the San Francisco conference on Asian American
mental health. In 1971 as a result of contacts among K. Patrick
Okura, then Executive Assistant Director of the National Insti-
tute of Mental Health (NIMH), James Ralph, Chief of the
Center for Minority Mental Health Programs, and the Asian
American Social Workers Organization, NIMH agreed to fund
the first national conference on Asian American mental health.
This 1972 conference, which was held in San Francisco, was
intended to convene 81 delegates from throughout the nation to
examine the mental health needs and priorities of Asian Amer-
icans. Conference organizers expected another 300– 400 per-
sons as participants/observers. However, more than 600 indi-
viduals attended, giving rise to much conflict and tension.
Table 1
Key Events in the History of Asian American Psychology (Years in Boldface), With References to Events in Asian American History
Year Event
1965 Immigration law abolishes “national origins” as the basis for allocating immigration quotas to various countries, and preferences are
given to those with professional skills and to family reunification; this marks the start of an exponential growth in Asian
American population.
1968 Students are on strike at San Francisco State University to demand establishment of ethnic studies programs.
1969 Students at the University of California, Berkeley, go on strike for establishment of ethnic studies programs.
1972 The AAPA is founded on December 10; Derald W. Sue served as the president until 1975.
1972 K. Patrick Okura organizes the first Asian American mental health conference in San Francisco.
1974 Richmond Maxi-Center (later renamed Richmond Area Multi-Services or RAMS), the first ethnic-specific outpatient mental health
center for Asian Americans, opens in San Francisco.
1976 The National Asian American Psychology Training Conference, organized by Stanley Sue and funded by NIMH, meets in Long
Beach, California.
1978 At the National Conference for Increasing Roles of Culturally Diverse People in Psychology (the Dulles Conference), Asian
American psychologists advocate for a better representation of Asian Americans in the APA; Robert Chin and Reiko True are
appointed to the ad hoc committee on Cultural and Ethnic Affairs (later to become the Board of Ethnic Minority Affairs).
1979 RAMS begins operating the National Asian American Psychology Training Center, the first training site for mental health
professionals to provide culturally appropriate services to Asian Americans; AAPA begins self-publishing the AAPA journal
(continued until 1989).
1980 The Asian focus unit, the first ethnic-specific inpatient psychiatric facility for Asian Americans, opens at the San Francisco General
Hospital, headed by Francis Lu, M.D.
1982 Vincent Chin, a Chinese American draftsman, is clubbed to death with a baseball bat by two Euro-American men; an advocacy
movement to bring legal justice renews Asian American community activism.
1987 The U.S. House of Representatives votes 243 to 141 to make an official apology to Japanese Americans and to pay each surviving
internee $20,000 in reparations. (The U.S. Senate voted in 1988 to support redress for Japanese Americans in 1988, and President
George H. W. Bush signs it into law in 1989.)
1988 Using their redress payments from the U.S. government paid out to former internees in Japanese American internment camps
during World War II, K. Patrick Okura and Lilly Okura found the Okura Mental Health Leadership Foundation to empower
Asian American leaders with skills and knowledge in public policy and advocacy.
1995 Christine Iijima Hall is elected the first female president of the AAPA; the Division on Women within the AAPA is established by
Alice F. Chang; AAPA publishes the History of Asian American Psychology monograph, edited by Frederick Leong.
1997 Richard M. Suinn is elected the first Asian American president of the APA.
1998 The Handbook of Asian American Psychology, co-edited by Lee C. Lee and Nolan W. S. Zane, is published by Sage.
1999 Tiffany Ho convenes the Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Summit in Washington, D.C.
2000 As a direct result of the 1999 Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Summit, the National Asian American Pacific
Islander Mental Health Association is formed with D. J. Ida as its executive director.
2000 Stanley Sue is invited to author the Asian American chapter in Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity, a Supplement to
Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General.
2002 Larke Huang is appointed as one of the commissioners within the President’s New Freedom Commission.
2002 The AAPA celebrates the 30th anniversary of the founding of the association at its annual convention in Chicago, Illinois.
2005 Frederick Leong, as president of AAPA, and with the presidents of the other ethnic minority psychological associations, is invited
to the APA Council of Representatives to begin exploring the establishment of a seat on council for these four associations.
2006 The second edition of the Handbook of Asian American Psychology—co-edited by Frederick Leong, Arpana Inman, Angela Ebreo,
Lawrence Yang, Lisa Kinoshita, and Michi Fu—is published by Sage.
Note. AAPA ⫽ Asian American Psychological Association; NIMH ⫽ National Institute of Mental Health; APA ⫽ American Psychological Association;
RAMS ⫽ Richmond Area Multi-Services.
355
SPECIAL ISSUE: ASIAN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY

Demand emerged for giving all participants a voice as delegates
and tensions developed between different factions, for example,
grassroots constituency versus agency professional groups. The
more militant versus the less militant approaches to confronting
the governmental agencies were discussed. Underlying the ten-
sion were feelings of frustration and anger over years of inad-
equate services and programs for Asian American and Pacific
American communities. Details concerning some of the prob-
lems and tensions of that conference are available in the Con-
ference Report Committee and also briefly reviewed by Sue and
Morishima (1982) in their book.
For Asian American psychology specifically, the pivotal early
conference was the National Asian American Psychology Training
Conference held at Long Beach, California, from July 29 to
August 1, 1976 (see Figure 2). Again, with the support from K.
Patrick Okura and the board of the AAPA, Stanley Sue wrote a
conference grant proposal to the NIMH to convene a national
conference on the training of mental health service providers to
serve Asian American communities. Albert H. Yee, Dean of Grad-
uate Studies and Research at the California State University, Long
Beach, and members of AAPA board were instrumental in secur-
ing the conference site. The report from the conference (Sue &
Chin, 1976) details both the process and the substantive content of
the conference. A brief report on the conference was also pub-
lished in the July 1978 issue of the American Psychologist (Dong,
Wong, Callao, Nishihara, & Chin, 1978). The conference provided
a setting for administrators, faculty, practitioners, and students to
share perspectives on the mental health needs of Asian Americans.
Among the outcomes of the conference were recommendations
concerning appropriate models and approaches of psychology for
Asian Americans and appropriate training of psychologists for
Asian American communities. More specifically, the major objec-
tives of the conference were (a) to gain a sense of the mental health
service needs of Asian Americans from individuals who have
active involvement with them; (b) to identify and recognize salient
issues for various Asian American groups; (c) to abstract from the
participants’ backgrounds and experiences both instances and
preparation that would facilitate work with Asian Americans and
instances of inadequate or counterproductive training for such
work; and (d) to organize information gathered into a series of
recommendations for improving the training of Asian American
psychologists.
The conference centered around two themes, the first of which
is models of psychology for Asian Americans. The suggestions
that evolved from the conference included the following: (a)
Research much be conducted examining which psychotherapeutic
Figure 1. Derald Wing Sue (left) and Stanley Sue, cofounders of the
Asian American Psychological Association.
Figure 2. The National Asian American Psychology Training Confer-
ence, Long Beach, California (July 31 to August 1, 1976). List of
participants: Max Callao, Sam Chan, Robert Chin, Ki-Tack Chun, Jim
Cortez, Tim Dong, Lloyd Inui, Davis Ja, Henry Johnson, John Jung,
Bok-Lim Kim, Luke Kim, Harry Kitano, Margaret Kokka, Ramsey
Liem, William Liu, Chalsa Loo, Barbara Lui, Roger Lum, Norman Mar,
Tuan Nguyen, Aline Nishihara, Vincente Noble, Yukio Okano, K.
Patrick Okura, Robert Ryan, Lindbergh Sata, Stanley Schneider, Helen
Sing, Stanley Sue, Richard Suinn, Ruby Takanish, Gilfred Tanabe,
Dalmas Taylor, Marion Tinloy, Reiko True, Leon West, Herbert Wong,
Harry Yamaguchi, and Albert H. Yee.
Table 2
Asian American Psychological Association Presidents
(1972–2008)
Term President
1972–1975 Derald Sue
1975–1979 Robert Chin
1979–1982 Albert H. Yee
1982–1984 Harry Yamaguchi
1984–1988
a
Herbert Z. Wong
1988–1990 Katsuyuki Sakamoto
1990–1991 David S. Goh
1991–1993 Nolan W. S. Zane
1993–1995 S. Andrew Chen
1995–1997 Christine C. Iijima Hall
1997–1999 Reiko Homma True
1999–2001 Gayle Y. Iwamasa
2001–2003 J. C. Gisela Lin
2003–2005 Frederick Leong
2005–2008 Alvin Alvarez
2008–present Karen Suyemoto
a
Because of incomplete archival records, the start and end dates of Wong’s
presidential terms are uncertain. There are records that indicate that
Yamaguchi finished his term in the summer of 1984, that Wong was
serving as the president in 1985 and 1986, and that Sakamoto’s terms were
1988 –1990.
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LEONG AND OKAZAKI

materials and approaches are effective for Asian Americans and
why such materials and approaches are effective. (b) Modification
of traditional approaches should be made by incorporating infor-
mation from community people and community workers in col-
laboration with researchers. (c) More Asian American psychology
students should be encouraged into Asian American training pro-
grams in order to facilitate their awareness of Asian American
concerns and to work in a relevant, supportive, intellectual, and
experiential climate toward the conceptualization of Asian Amer-
ican psychology. (d) To meet the needs of Asian Americans, it is
important to have a wide range of skills and competencies. Train-
ing should include exposure to different areas of psychology as
well as to interdisciplinary fields. (e) Guidelines for competence
for working with Asian Americans must be developed. These
guidelines should be in areas of training and career education and
licensing of psychologists.
The second theme concerned the specific training of psycholo-
gists for Asian Americans. It was recommended that courses on
Asian Americans be offered and available to students. Addition-
ally, Asian American perspectives in research and practice should
be integrated into existing psychology courses such as in areas of
social, community, and clinical psychology. The second level of
recommendations was aimed at the establishing of centers for
training psychologists to work with Asian Americans. Many of the
issues raised and recommendations derived from that conference
remain relevant to this day.
With the leadership of Tiffany Ho and some 27 years after the
first Asian American mental health conference in San Francisco,
the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) of the Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
convened an Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Sum-
mit on July 10 –12, 1999, in Washington, D.C. Leaders from
government, academia, and the community were invited to this
summit to discuss the mental health needs of Asian Americans and
Pacific Islanders across the country. A Strategic Planning Com-
mittee was formed and in July 2000, the National Asian American
Pacific Islander Mental Health Association (NAAPIMHA) was
formed with D. J. Ida as its executive director.
From its inception, NAAPIMHA has focused on five distinct but
interrelated areas: (a) Enhance collection of appropriate and accu-
rate data; (b) identify current best practices and service models; (c)
increase capacity building, which includes providing technical
assistance and training of service providers, both professional and
para-professional; (d) conduct research and evaluation; and (e)
work to engage consumers and families. The underlying assump-
tion is that a national organization should advocate on behalf of
each of these areas and that cultural competency will be reflected
at all levels.
Sue’s Testimony to Washington State Senate
One of the key moments in Asian American psychology’s
relevance to public policy involved Stanley Sue’s early research
with mental health service delivery. With funding from NIMH,
Sue and colleagues (Sue, Allen, & Conaway, 1978; Sue &
McKinney, 1975; Sue, McKinney, Allen, & Hall, 1974) had con-
ducted a series of analyses of the data from 17 community mental
health centers over a 3-year period in Seattle’s King County,
Washington, and their analysis had demonstrated a high dropout
rate for ethnic minority clients receiving treatment in the system.
Sue et al. had concluded that the high dropout rate may be due to
the existing services not meeting the needs of ethnic minority
clients. Unknown to Sue at the time, the NIMH had contacted the
Washington State Department of Social and Health Services
(DSHS) to express their concern about inequities in service deliv-
ery across ethnic groups (Sue, 1992). The Washington State DSHS
in turn challenged the findings by Sue on the grounds that 1 of the
17 mental health facilities included in the analysis may not have
provided accurate data.
Sue was eventually asked by the Washington State Psycholog-
ical Association to testify at a hearing of the Washington State
Senate Subcommittee on Mental Health in 1979. To prepare for the
hearing, Sue and colleagues reanalyzed the data without the data
from the one facility in question and found that their results did not
change. As a result of Sue’s testimony, the Washington State
DSHS initiated new programs that were intended to offer cultur-
ally responsive services for ethnic minority populations, such as
hiring more ethnic minority service providers and creating ethnic-
specific service sites. An analysis of the same King County mental
health system data 10 years later by independent investigators
found that there were no longer differences between ethnic minor-
ity clients and White clients in the rate of premature termination
from mental health treatment (O’Sullivan, Petersen, Cox, &
Kirkeby, 1989).
Establishment of Parallel Services
Washington state was not the only place where Sue’s (1977) call
to establish ethnic-specific (or parallel) services was heeded. In
metropolitan cities across the nation, ethnic-specific mental health
and substance abuse services have proliferated. For example, a
nonprofit membership organization, the National Asian Pacific
American Families Against Substance Abuse’s (NAPAFASA)
web site (www.napafasa.org) listed over 60 outpatient facilities
and community-based organizations providing mental health and
substance abuse treatment services to Asian American populations
in 16 states. Among these service agencies, two are particularly
noteworthy with respect to its historical significance for Asian
American mental health service delivery.
San Francisco has historically been a key site for Asian Amer-
icans in both size and significance since the late 1800s, and the
Asian American activism began in the San Francisco Bay Area in
the 1960s. Among the first agencies to break the barriers to access
for Asian Americans and to offer bilingual culturally relevant
services were Chinatown/North Beach Mental Health Services and
Chinatown Child Development Center. Following the leads of
these agencies, the Richmond Area Multi-Services (RAMS; orig-
inally named Richmond Maxi-Center) located in the Richmond
District of San Francisco, was established in 1974, making it one
of the early pioneers in parallel service clinics for Asian Ameri-
cans. The major goals of the RAMS were to provide community-
based, culturally competent, and consumer-guided mental health
services to residents of the Richmond district and the Asian Amer-
ican communities in San Francisco and San Mateo. As the largest
private, nonprofit agency in San Francisco with an Asian focus
(and more recently, also a Russian focus), RAMS provides bilin-
gual bicultural services to a significant number of Asian American
and other immigrants and refugees. In 1979, RAMS began oper-
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ating the National Asian American Psychology Training Center
(NAAPTC). This training center was originally funded by NIMH
and was the first program in the United States to provide focused
training on the delivery of mental health services to Asian Amer-
ican populations. Its predoctoral internship in psychology has been
accredited by the APA continuously since 1980. Stanley Sue
served as the Director of Clinical Training at the NAAPTC from
1980 to 1981. From 1990 until 2003, RAMS was headed by
Evelyn Lee, who was a licensed clinical social worker and a
national leader in Asian American mental health service delivery.
Also located in San Francisco and established in 1980, the Asian
Focus Unit in San Francisco General Hospital’s (SFGH) Depart-
ment of Psychiatry was the first inpatient psychiatric unit to
provide culturally and linguistically competent services as well as
training in the inpatient care of Asian American patients (see Gee,
Du, Akiyama, & Lu, 1999). Subsequent to the establishment of
this Asian Focus Unit, SFGH also established African American
Focus Unit, Latino/a Unit, Women’s Issues Focus Unit, and Les-
bian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender (LGBT), and HIV/AIDS Focus
Unit. Psychiatrist Francis Lu was the first program director of the
Asian Focus Unit, followed by Evelyn Lee between 1982 and
1990. Notably, the unit survived a serious threat of elimination in
2000 due to budget shortfalls by the San Francisco Department of
Public Health.
Contributions of Asian American Women Psychologists
In addition to the founding of the Division on Women in AAPA by
Alice Chang and the pioneering work of Evelyn Lee at the Asian
Focus Unit of San Francisco General Hospital, there were many other
significant contributions by Asian American women psychologists. It
is not possible to be exhaustive, but we highlight the accomplishments
of some of these outstanding Asian American psychologists. For
example, Larke Huang coedited the landmark book on Children of
Color with Jewelle Taylor Gibbs (Gibbs & Huang, 1990) and was
also the recipient of the APA Award for Distinguished Contributions
to Psychology in the Public Interest in 2007. She was also appointed
to the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health and
served for several years as the Senior Advisor to the Administrator of
the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
(SAMHSA). Similarly, Ruby Takanishi made significant contribu-
tions to mental health policy, especially with regard to children and
adolescents. Following her Congressional fellowship, she was found-
ing executive director of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological,
and Cognitive Sciences in 1982 and director of the Office of Scientific
Affairs of the APA from 1984 to 1986. From 1986 to 1996, Takanishi
was executive director of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent De-
velopment, where she sought to raise the adolescent years higher on
the national agenda. In 1997, she won the APA Award for Distin-
guished Contributions to Research in Public Policy and was also
awarded the AAPA Presidential Citation in 2005. Maria Root, winner
of the 1997 APA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychol-
ogy in the Public Interest, has also made long-standing contributions
to our understanding of biracial individuals in this country through her
research and many books on the topic and is considered the leading
national authority on the subject. She has also been a leading re-
searcher on Filipino Americans.
Other leading Asian American women psychologists include
Chalsa Loo, who was the first Asian American President of APA
Division 45 by serving as copresident with John Moritsugu; Jean Lau
Chin, who was the first Asian American president of APA Division
35 in 2002 and who has written and edited many important books on
Asian American mental health and served the profession as an ad-
ministrator at various institutions and universities; Yu-Wen Ying,
whose pioneering research on Asian immigrant mental health with her
1988 Journal of Clinical Psychology article on depression among
Chinese Americans has been cited over 100 times; and Ruth K. Chao,
whose 1994 Child Development article on authoritarian parenting and
the Chinese immigrant style of “training,” which demonstrated that
authoritarian parenting is adaptive in some cultural contexts, has been
cited 270 times. Connie Chan won the APA Division 44 Distin-
guished Contribution to Ethnic Minority Issues in 1994 and has
provided national leadership on LGBT issues.
Reiko True served as president of AAPA from 1997 to 1999,
and she was able to establish financial stability within the associ-
ation by expanding the financial contributions made to the annual
convention. During her presidency, True also spearheaded the
association’s support for the appointment of Bill Lann Lee to the
U.S. Civil Rights Commission as well as the support and formation
of regional and networking groups and the organization of the
National Multicultural Summit and Conference. Another of note is
Christine Iijima Hall, who was elected the first female president of
the AAPA and has served as the Director of the Office of Ethnic
Minority Affairs at APA. Finally, it is important to note that Alice
Chang was the first woman of color to be elected to the APA
Board of Directors in 1994.
National Mental Health Policies and Activities
Another significant event was the 1977 President’s Commission
on Mental Health, in which Stanley Sue and Robert Chin played a
significant role in advancing the Asian American perspective on
minority mental health. As was indicated by Sue and Moroshima
(1982), the 1977 meeting of the Asian Pacific American Subpanel
of the President’s Commission on Mental Health was attended by
25 national leaders in the mental health field and supported by the
ideas of many other Asian Pacific American experts. At this
meeting of the subpanel the group sought to evaluate mental health
needs, to critique research service delivery programs, and to make
recommendations for improving the mental health of Asian Amer-
icans. Many of the 76 recommendations are consistent with the
ideas expressed by others. (a) Mental health policy should ac-
knowledge unique cultures, lifestyles, and languages. (b) Asian
Americans and Pacific Americans should be represented in posi-
tions involving governance and decision-making. (c) Bilingual and
bicultural personnel should be available to Asian American and
Pacific American clients in the mental health system. (d) Training
programs, service delivery systems, and research should be im-
proved so that the welfare of Asian Americans and Pacific Amer-
icans can be better promoted. (e) Racist practices must be elimi-
nated.
With the 1999 White House Conference on Mental Health as the
backdrop, the first-ever Surgeon General’s report on mental health
and mental illness entitled Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon
General (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 1999)
was also issued that year. This report highlighted several themes:
(a) Mental health is fundamental to health. (b) Mental illnesses are
real health conditions. (c) The efficacy of mental health treatments
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LEONG AND OKAZAKI

is well documented. (d) A range of treatments exists for most
mental disorders. However, the report noted that when compared
with the White majority population, racial and ethnic minorities
“bear a greater burden from unmet mental health needs and thus
suffer a greater loss to their overall health and productivity” (U.S.
Department of Health & Human Services, 1999, p. 3). Many in the
racial and ethnic minority mental health professions felt that this
very important message was lost in the Surgeon General’s report
or at least not given the sufficient attention that it deserved. This
lead to a complicated process whereby a supplement to the Sur-
geon General’s report entitled Mental Health: Culture, Race, and
Ethnicity—A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Sur-
geon General was finally issued in 2001 (U.S. Department of
Health & Human Services, 2001). Once again, Stanley Sue, our
leading authority on Asian American mental health, was pressed
into service, and he wrote the chapter on Asian Americans (chapter
5) for the Surgeon General’s supplement. Please see the special
issue guest-edited by Doris Chang (2003) in Culture, Medicine and
Psychiatry that provides an account and analysis of this compli-
cated political process regarding the intersection of science and
politics.
A quarter of a century after President Jimmy Carter’s Commis-
sion on Mental Health, President George W. Bush established the
President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April
2002. The President directed the commission to identify policies
that could be implemented by federal, state, and local governments
to maximize the utility of existing resources, improve coordination
of treatments and services, and promote successful community
integration for adults with a serious mental illness and children
with a serious emotional disturbance. From June 2002 to April
2003, the 22 commissioners met monthly to analyze the public and
private mental health systems, visit innovative model programs
across the country, and hear testimony from the systems’ many
stakeholders, including dozens of consumers of mental health care,
families, advocates, public and private providers and administra-
tors, and mental health researchers. In addition to public comment,
the commission consulted with nationally recognized professionals
with expertise in diverse areas of mental health policy. The com-
mission issued its final report, Achieving the Promise: Transform-
ing Mental Health Care in America in July 2003 (New Freedom
Commission on Mental Health, 2003), which will serve as the
blueprint of our national mental health policies for years to come.
Fortunately, Larke Huang, one of the AAPA members, was ap-
pointed as one of the commissioners, and she ensured that the
Asian American and Pacific Islander perspectives were repre-
sented in this highly important policy setting group. In 2005,
Huang was invited to be one of the keynote speakers at the annual
convention of the AAPA to share her experience and perspectives
on serving on the New Freedom Commission.
Substantive Areas of Asian American
Psychological Research
In order to provide an historical overview of the research con-
tent of Asian American psychology, Leong (1995) used the bibli-
ography by Leong and Wittfield (1992), entitled Asians in the
United States: Abstracts of the Psychological and Behavior Liter-
ature, 1967–1991, as the basis for identifying the content areas that
have been most heavily researched with regard to Asian American
psychology for that period. Using the topic classification provided
by the database PsychInfo, Leong (1995) found that the most
frequently researched areas with regard to journal articles included
social processes and social issues, which constitute 22.9% of the
journal articles on Asian Americans published between 1967 and
1991. This in turn was followed by health and mental health
treatment and prevention, which constituted 19.3%, followed by
educational psychology (11.5%), and psychological and physical
disorders (10.6%).
In order to examine possible convergences in this pattern, Leong
(1995) also analyzed the dissertation literature on Asian Ameri-
cans in the United States between 1967 and 1991. Consistent with
journal articles, it was discovered that the primary area covered by
dissertations was also that of social processes and social issues,
which constituted 28.7% of that literature. However, this was
closely followed by educational psychology, which constituted
25.8%, which was double that of the journal articles. In addition,
unlike the journal articles, 13.4% of the dissertations focus on
developmental psychology, as opposed to only 9.5% of the journal
articles. In summary, it appeared that social processes and social
issues were the most heavily researched areas of Asian American
psychology during that period. On the other hand, with regard to
health and mental health treatment and prevention, considerably
more attention was focused on those topics within the journal
articles than in the dissertation studies. Dissertation topics on the
other hand tended to focus more on developmental psychology and
educational psychology. The journal articles tended to focus on
treatment and prevention, psychological and physiological disor-
ders, and to a lesser extent on educational psychology.
The relative amount of attention devoted to treatment, preven-
tion, and psychological disorders is an important topic, because
there have been continuing criticisms that that the AAPA, like
APA, has been dominated by clinical and counseling psycholo-
gists. Thus, it appears that the journal literature from 1967 to 1991
appears to mirror the specialty training and background of the
AAPA membership. However, it should be noted that this is a
complex problem, and we cannot assume a direct linkage between
these two trends. For example, the lower level of coverage of the
“clinical” topics among dissertations may be due to the fact that
those studies (which require access to clinical populations) may be
more difficult to undertake for doctoral students.
Leong (1995) also proposed another way of obtaining an
overview of the research content of Asian American psychology
by identifying the leading contributors to the Asian American
psychological literature from 1967 to 1991. He suggested that
one could examine these individuals for their primary areas of
research and contribution in order to identify the more popular
specialty areas within the field. In examining the citation at the
end of the Leong and Wittfield (1992) volume, it was discov-
ered that the leading contributors to the Asian American psy-
chological literature included Ronald C. Johnson
(22 articles), Joseph Westermeyer (19 articles), Stanley Sue (18
articles), David Kinzie (18 articles), Craig T. Nagoshi
(13 articles), Anthony Marsella (11 articles), Harry H. Kitano
(11 articles), Donald Atkinson (10 articles), Jacquelyn H.
Flaskerud (10 articles), Frederick T. L. Leong (10 articles), Kay
Midlan (10 articles), and Joe Yamamoto (10 articles).
Leong (1995) noted that with few exceptions, most of these re-
searchers focused on mental health issues with regard to Asian Amer-
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SPECIAL ISSUE: ASIAN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY

icans. For example, Joseph Westermeyer’s work is primarily focused
on immigrant and refugee mental health, whereas Stanley Sue’s work
is focused on Asian American mental health, community issues, and
mental health treatment. David Kinsey also researched immigrant and
refugee issues, and Anthony Marsella researched issues with regard to
mental disorders among Asian Americans.
Another way to examine the growth of attention to Asian American
psychology would be to analyze the PsychInfo coverage of the topic
over the last decade and a half. Using 1991 as the starting point,
because the Leong and Whitfield (1992) volume covered literature
until that period, we find that there were 1834 entries on Asians.
Incidentally, Asians rather than Asian Americans is the preferred
indexing term in PsychInfo because there are Asians in the United
States, Canada, United Kingdom, Brazil, and so forth. Using the time
periods established by the PsychInfo database, we found that the
number of entries devoted to Asians grew from 1834 to 2739 in 1994,
which was a 49% increase. It continued to grow from 2739 entries to
3558 entries in 1997 (29% increase), to 4147 in 1999 (16% increase),
to 5148 in 2002 (24% increase), and finally to 6045 in 2005 (17%
increase). In other words, the coverage of Asians in the psychological
literature as represented in PsychInfo grew 229% in 14 years from
1991 to 2005.
Another perspective on the coverage of substantive areas is to
review the various books that have been published on this topic.
While there have been numerous books published on Asian Ameri-
cans from the perspective of Asian American studies (e.g., Kitano &
Daniels’, 2000, Asian Americans: Emerging Minorities), our present
focus is on books with a psychological focus. The first two volumes
on this topic were published by Stanley Sue with his colleagues: (a)
Asian Americans: Psychological Perspectives, coedited by Stanley
Sue and Nathaniel Wagner in 1973 (Sue & Wagner, 1973), and (b)
Asian Americans: Social and Psychological Perspectives, Volume 2,
coedited by Russell Endo, Stanley Sue, and Nathaniel Wagner in
1980 (Endo, Sue, & Wagner, 1980). With the increasing attention
paid to this population and the growing literature, Stanley Sue ob-
tained a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
with James Morishima to provide an overview to the Asian American
mental health literature. The Handbook of Asian American/Pacific
Islander Mental Health, Volume 1, was published by NIMH with
Morishima, Sue, Teng, Zane, and Cram (1980) as editors. This vol-
ume was essentially an annotated bibliography, with Volume 2 pro-
viding the critical analysis of the literature. Volume 2 was later
published as the now classic Mental Health of Asian Americans by
Stanley Sue and James Morishima (1982) by Jossey-Bass. An up-
dated annotated bibliography entitled Asians in the United States:
Abstracts of the Psychological and Behavioral Literature, 1967–1991
was later coedited by Leong and Whitfield (1992) and published by
the APA as part of the bibliography series on racial and ethnic
minority groups. Incidentally, the Morishima et al. NIMH bibliogra-
phy contained 401 entries, and the Leong and Whitfield bibliography
covered 1750 entries. As was mentioned above, a recent search of the
PsychInfo database found 6045 entries on Asians as of October 2005.
While the Sue and Morishima (1982) volume on the mental
health of Asian Americans has remained a classic in the field, other
volumes had also begun to emerge. For example, Laura Uba
published her Asian Americans: Personality, Identity and Mental
Health in 1994 (Uba, 1994; Guilford Press), which many have
considered to be an update and successor to the Sue and Mor-
ishima (1982) volume. Some years later, Uba (2002) published A
Postmodern Psychology of Asian Americans: Creating Knowledge
of a Racial Minority (SUNY Press), a volume in which she
suggested that Asian American psychology can move in a new
direction by incorporating a postmodern perspective into our
scholarship and teaching. At the same time, there were also other
volumes devoted to specialty topics within Asian American psy-
chology. One example is that by Zane, Takeuchi, and Young
(1994) on health psychology, entitled Confronting Critical Health
Issues of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (Sage). Other
examples of specialty books include Kurasaki, Okazaki, and Sue’s
(2002) volume entitled Asian American Mental Health: Assess-
ment Theories and Methods (Kluwer), which focused on assess-
ment, and Evelyn Lee’s (1997) volume, Working with Asian Amer-
icans: A Guide for Clinicians, which focused on therapy and
treatment. The most recent edition to the series of books was edited
by Gordon C. Nagayama Hall and Sumie Okazaki (2002) under the
title of Asian American Psychology: The Science of Lives in
Context, which was published by APA Books. The chapters for
this book were actually presented at a 1-day “think-tank” meeting
during the 2000 AAPA convention. Of course, one knows that
most fields of inquiry have actually matured when it launches a
handbook, and this occurred with the publication of the Handbook
of Asian American Psychology (L. C. Lee & Zane, 1998; Sage).
The second edition of this Handbook of Asian American Psychol-
ogy is now in preparation as part of the presidential initiatives of
Frederick Leong with several members of his executive committee
(Arpana Inman, Angela Ebreo, Lawrence Yang, Lisa Kinoshita,
and Michi Fu).
Education and Training
As Leong (1995) had pointed out, one of the major develop-
ments that has assisted the education and training of Asian Amer-
ican psychologists tremendously is the formation of the Minority
Fellowship Program (MFP) within the American Psychological
Association. The MFP was funded by the federal government
through various offices so that minority members would obtain
special fellowships to become mental health professionals. These
included psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and nurses.
The Minority Fellowship Program for psychologists was adminis-
tered by APA beginning in 1974. Throughout these 22 years
(1974 –2006) of funding, over 1100 students have been provided
fellowships to become minority psychologists. Between 1974 and
2006, 191 fellows were Asian Americans, 108 in clinical track
(clinical, counseling, and school psychology) and 594 in the men-
tal health research track. In terms of the geographical breakdown
of the Asian American minority fellows, the majority of the
fellows came from California with 25. The other states that have
high numbers of Asian American minority fellows included Mas-
sachusetts, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, Illinois, Oregon, and
Texas. Since an analysis by Leong (1995), the Minority Fellow-
ship Program had continued to add different programs focused on
neuroscience, aging, HIV/AIDS, and so forth In the recent issue of
the MFP newsletter, Variability (Minority Fellowship Program,
2005), James Jones in his retirement statement indicated that the
MFP had provided training support to over 1100 students. In
recognition of his vision and leadership in providing training
support to scores of Asian American psychologists over the years,
the AAPA awarded Jones one of the Presidential Awards at its
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LEONG AND OKAZAKI

2004 annual convention in Honolulu, Hawaii (http://www.apa.org/
mfp).
Another important development in the education and training of
Asian American psychologists was the Richmond Area Multi-
Services (RAMS) organization (Leong, 1995), a community-based
mental health agency located in the Richmond District of San
Francisco and founded in 1974. As was described earlier, this
nonprofit organization provided an excellent training facility for
Asian American psychologists. The Richmond Area Multi-
Services organization consisted of four programs: their outpatient
and prevention services, the adult day treatment services, the Asian
Family Institute, and the National Asian American Psychology
Training Center. Stanley Sue was the first director of the National
Asian American Psychology Training Center. Numerous Asian
American psychology leaders were trained at RAMS, including
Nolan Zane.
The Richmond Area Services and particularly the National
Asian American Psychology Training Center has been funded by
the federal government and has provided valuable training of
clinical and counseling Asian American psychologists for the last
18 years. The value and the contribution of this center in the
training of Asian American psychologists cannot be overestimated.
RAMS is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary (http://
www.ramsinc.org/ramshome.html).
Another institution that played a significant role in the education
and training of Asian American psychologists was the Pacific/
Asian American Mental Health Research Center (PAAMHRC),
which was located at the then University of Illinois, Chicago Circle
(now University of Illinois at Chicago). This was one of several
ethnic-specific minority mental health research centers funded by
the National Institute of Mental Health in the 1980s. Under the
leadership of the principal pnvestigator, William Liu, who was a
professor of sociology at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle,
PAAMHRC ran research-training workshops for scores of Asian
American psychologists and sociologists during that decade. In-
structors for these training workshops included Stanley Sue from
the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Samuel
Peng from the National Institute of Education.
Beginning in 1988, the Asian American ethnic specific men-
tal health research center was awarded to the National Research
Center on Asian American Mental Health (NRCAAMH), which
was directed by Stanley Sue at UCLA. Eventually, the
NRCAAMH was moved to the University of California, Davis,
when Sue took a position at that university. With its numerous
research projects, the center has attracted many talented Asian
Americans into psychology and count among its staff some of the
leading researchers in Asian American psychology. Nolan Zane,
who had assisted Sue in writing that first grant proposal for the
center, and served as its first associate director, recently assumed
the directorship of the National Research Center on Asian Amer-
ican Mental Health (http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/nrcaamh/
index.htm).
Future of Asian American Psychology
In 2002, the Asian American Psychological Association cele-
brated the 30th anniversary of the founding of the association by
inviting Frederick Leong to be the opening keynote speaker. Leong
(1995) had written the association monograph outlining the history
of the association. He began by noting that the history of Asian
American psychology needed to be understood within the context
of the history of Asians in the United States and that a major theme
in that historical record is that of “struggles against injustice.”
These struggles included significant events such as the Chinese
Exclusion Act and the Japanese Internment during the Second
World War. Moving on to organized psychology, Leong noted that
the theme in his history monograph was that of “a struggle for
inclusion,” in which the leaders of the association sought to have
Asian American concerns and perspectives recognized and appre-
ciated within the American Psychological Association. In over 30
years, AAPA has evolved into an active and vibrant association
with over 500 members. As a significant step in this struggle for
inclusion, the APA’s Council of Representatives is now consider-
ing the issue of creating a seat on that council for a representative
from AAPA.
In that 2002 presentation, Leong also provided a glimpse into
the future of Asian American psychology from his perspective.
Using Hazel Markus and P. Nurius’ (1986) concept of “Possible
Selves,” he introduced the concept of possible futures for
the association. In the following scenarios of possible futures, he
suggested the theme that might characterize the future of the
association as one of “a little less struggle, a little more hope.” He
presented some possible historical highlights for our next 30 years,
with the hope that someone will be presenting some of these
historical highlights at the 60th anniversary of AAPA:
1. AAPA elects its first non-Japanese and non-Chinese
president. . . Perhaps Korean, followed by Filippino,
Vietnamese, and Asian Indian.
2. The American Psychological Association elects its first
Asian American woman as president.
3. A leading psychology department in the United States
promotes the 20th Asian American to full professor
rank....Currently, there are about half a dozen.
4. AAPA celebrates the enrollment of its 1000th member
(currently there are 500).
5. There are enough Asian Americans serving on the APA
Council of Representatives that an Asian American Cau-
cus is formed.
6. The government releases the 3rd edition of the Surgeon
General’s Report on Mental Health, and a major finding
is that there is no longer an underutilization of mental
health services among Asian Americans.
7. Some early winners of the AAPA Early Career Award in
the late 1990s coedit the Encyclopedia of Asian American
Psychology.
Predicting the future is always a hazardous undertaking for
scientists, because so many variables are involved in the evolution
and development of a field. What is clear from this historical
review of Asian American psychology is that AAPA with all of its
associated organizations and sister agencies is progressing along a
trajectory of growth and development. Currently, there are already
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SPECIAL ISSUE: ASIAN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY

three generations of psychologists within the field, and as the
second generation of Asian American psychologists takes over
from the pioneering group, the third and latest generation is poised
to also make their mark on the field. It is not inconceivable that
most of the “possible futures” envisioned by Leong in his 2002
keynote address will come true.
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