The overall goal of this project was to disentangle or unpack ethnic differences in depression among Asian Americans and European Americans by conducting two studies that examine cultural and contextual factors. The general introduction provides information on Asian American demographics, discusses depression among Asian Americans and describes the disentangling approach (Leong, Park, & Kalibatseva, 2013), which tests the incremental validity of culturally relevant psychological variables. A brief description of several culturally relevant psychological constructs is provided at the end of Chapter 1 and more information about each construct is presented in each study. The first study used secondary data analysis to examine loss of face and acculturation family conflict in relation to depression among Asian American and European American college students. As predicted, the study found that Asian Americans reported higher scores on depression, loss of face, and acculturation family conflict than European Americans. In addition, the two culturally relevant psychological variables explained a larger portion of the variance in depression scores in the Asian American sample compared to the European American sample. Using the disentangling approach, ethnicity was no longer a significant predictor of depression and sensitivity to loss of face and the seriousness of acculturation family conflict (but not the likelihood) predicted depression for the entire sample.The second study examined how cultural factors associate with the report of depressive and somatic symptoms among Chinese American and European American college students. There were no ethnic differences in depression scores. However, European Americans surprisingly reported more somatic symptoms than Chinese Americans. Post-hoc analyses revealed that this difference was largely due to the high report of somatic symptoms among European American females. When somatic symptoms and gender were controlled for in an ad-hoc analysis, an ethnic difference in depression emerged with Chinese Americans reporting higher scores than European Americans. The two samples did not vary in independent and interdependent self-construal and emotion regulation. The only ethnic difference for the culturally relevant variables was in higher sensitivity to loss of face for Chinese Americans than European Americans. It is possible that the hypothesized cultural differences were not observed because the Chinese American sample reported relatively high mainstream acculturation levels and low to moderate heritage acculturation levels. The disentangling approach revealed that higher depression scores were predicted by low independent self-construal and cognitive reappraisal and high sensitivity to loss of face and expressive suppression. The ethnic differences in depression, which were detected when controlling for somatic symptoms and gender, were no longer significant when the culturally relevant psychological variables were included in the regression. This study did not find evidence for somatization among Chinese Americans and suggested that depression differences could be explained by examining culturally salient constructs. Clinical implications include the reduction of health disparities in accessing and receiving quality depression treatment and provision of culturally sensitive treatments for depression.
Read
