Associate Professor Adelphi University GARDEN CITY, New York, United States
Abstract : Although Asian Americans have long played an integral role in the development of American popular culture, media, and scientific breakthroughs, a focus on Asian American mental health has only just come to the forefront of the field, despite poor mental health outcomes in these communities. Overall, Asian Americans tend to have worse mental health outcomes and lower mental healthcare utilization than their Caucasian counterparts. Consistent age effects have also been found – older Asian adults have higher rates of depression symptoms, and endorse higher levels of stigma against mental healthcare, than elderly individuals of other ethnicities. Additionally, mental health issues tend to have a differential impact on immigrants based on how long they have been living in, as well as how integrated they are with, the culture of their new country, and this discrepancy seems to follow a pattern throughout populations which is known as the immigrant paradox. The immigrant paradox states that U.S.-born children of immigrant parents, as well as immigrants who spend more time in the U.S. (thus having more time to acculturate to American culture), tend to have worse mental and physical health outcomes than newer immigrants. While there are studies that examine the immigrant paradox in relation to suicidality and self-harm behaviors, there are few that focus on these symptoms in Asian populations in the United States.
Given the insidious prevalence of suicidal ideation in Asian American populations, the present study seeks to understand the extent to which the immigrant paradox may replicate in an Asian American sample. In line with the immigrant paradox, we propose that cultural integration with American culture will be positively associated with suicidal ideation, non-suicidal self-injury. We also hypothesize that cultural integration will be positively associated with positive beliefs regarding mental health treatment, and that age will moderate these effects. For older participants, integration will be more weakly associated with suicidal ideation, as compared to their younger peers.
This study was approved by the Adelphi University Institutional Review Board and is currently "In the Works". We have n = 399 participants, who are all adults aged 18 and over, identify as “Asian”, and who currently reside in the United States. A snowball sampling procedure was employed for participant recruitment. A series of bivariate correlation analyses and moderation analyses using bias-corrected bootstrapping will be conducted in accordance with the hypotheses.
