Correlates of Korean immigrants' mental health
Article Abstract:
Part of a larger epidemiological study concerning Korean immigrants, which focuses on their mental health, is presented. Korean immigrants arrive in the US at the rate of 30,000 each year, but this wave of immigration is a relatively new one. Several problems connected with this shorter stay in the new country, such as higher unemployment, poorer language skills, and concentration in minority districts, may have led to the higher level of depression seen in other studies among Korean immigrants, compared with immigrants from China, Japan, or the Philippines. The current study reports data from 622 Korean immigrants living near Chicago. Social/cultural adaptation, family relations, and work experience, are investigated, and results correlated with length of residence in the US. Results indicated significant gender differences in mental health among this group: while marriage and employment were correlated with better mental health for both men and women, work-related factors also showed strong correlations with men's mental health. Women had no such clearly identifiable factors, although satisfaction with family life was moderately related to their mental health. A discussion of the theoretical importance of these findings is presented, with emphasis on culturally determined gender roles. Korean immigrant women did not find intrinsic rewards in their work outside the home, and the money they earned did not compensate them for the additional work they performed. That they worked under these circumstances, however, was a function of traditional Korean gender roles. Further research on this topic should focus on the ways individual immigrants solve the problems raised by the pressures to assimilate, on one hand, and the pressure to preserve an ethnic identity, on the other. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)
Publication Name: Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
Subject: Psychology and mental health
ISSN: 0022-3018
Year: 1990
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
Mental Health: a personal, as well as socially constructed, phenomenon
Article Abstract:
Despite the fact that one's sex exerts a great influence on experience and identity, the impact of gender is often not acknowledged in terms of mental illness, psychological symptoms or treatment and prevention strategies. In her book ''Women and Health Psychology: Mental Health Issues'' (1988), Cheryl Brown Travis emphasizes that mental health is both a personal and socially constructed phenomenon. For instance, she argues that disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia result from gender-related social dynamics experienced by women. The book begins with an overview of feminist perspectives and female-male relationships. Later chapters cover depression, psychotropic drugs, alcoholism and eating disorders in the context of sex differences and influences. There is a critical discussion of current psychoanalytic therapy as well as a discussion of nontraditional therapeutic approaches, including social support and feminist therapy alternatives. The book does an excellent job of demonstrating the impact of gender upon mental health through the influence of diagnoses, symptoms, and treatment strategies, as well as the influence of gender on the theoretical explanations of certain illnesses. Although it does not provide a deeper understanding of the specific disorders discussed beyond the import of gender influences, the book does provide a novel and important framework for the reader interested in mental health issues. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)
Publication Name: Contemporary Psychology
Subject: Psychology and mental health
ISSN: 0010-7549
Year: 1990
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
Classification of natural and supernatural causes of mental distress: development of a mental distress explanatory model questionnaire
Article Abstract:
Since patients' ways of interpreting their mental health problems are strongly determined by the culture from which they come, attention to cultural factors is important for the clinician who wants to speak to patients "in their own language". To aid in understanding how people from different cultures conceptualize mental illness, the Mental Distress Explanatory Model Questionnaire (MDEMQ), newly developed for this purpose, is explained and discussed. A review of relevant research literature from medical anthropology that helped in the formulation of the MDEMQ is presented. The questionnaire contains 45 items, and was tested on a sample of 261 college students of diverse ethnic backgrounds. Results indicated that the subjects identified causes of mental distress along continuums (dimensions) that included both "rational", western causes, and "irrational", nonwestern ones. Understanding the ways people conceptualize their own mental distress is essential for appropriate treatment, and it is hoped that the MDEMQ can be modified and improved for use in the clinical and research settings. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)
Publication Name: Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
Subject: Psychology and mental health
ISSN: 0022-3018
Year: 1990
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
- Abstracts: Delivery of mental health services in the changing health care system. A meaningful role for graduate students in Disaster Mental Health Services
- Abstracts: Vocational Interests and Personality. Personality Characteristics of US Navy Divers. Determinants of choice of goal difficulty level: a review of situational and personality influences
- Abstracts: Patterns of Residential Energy Behavior. The Influence of Price and Attitude on Shifting Residential Electricity Consumption from On-to-Off Peak Periods
- Abstracts: Brain neurotransmitter changes in three patients who had a fatal hyperthermia syndrome. Autoantibodies to brain lipids in schizophrenia
- Abstracts: A critical review of epidemiological studies of Puerto Rican mental health. The pharmacology of stuttering: a critical review