Pei Zhen Qu
December 14, 2015
Professor Liu
ASIAN 231
Research Paper The life of a Chinese American Growing up in a country where you are a minority amongst many other minorities can be difficult. This can cause many mental illnesses to the families and the individual itself. The United States is a country with many minority groups, one of which includes Chinese Americans. I know myself that it’s hard living in a place where there is racism and stereotypes about Chinese people, since I have been through this. The Chinese community is one of the fastest growing communities in the United States. The Chinese first came to the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. The reason why they left their home country was due to high taxes, peasant rebellions, family feuds, and poverty. The reason they came to the United States during that time was because of the California Gold Rush and a better economic opportunities. But because there were so many Chinese coming, the people of the United States developed xenophobia (a fear of people from other countries). So 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was put upon. But many years later, Chinese Americans were able to slowly to come back into the United States. Living in a different country can be very difficult. Especially if you are a parent trying to raise your children. This can cause a lot of stress because they have to work really hard in order to provide for their family. In “Chinese American Parents’ Acculturation and Enculturation, Bicultural Management Difficulty, Depressive Symptoms, and Parenting” by Su Yeong Kim, Yishan Shen, Xuan Huang, Yijie Wang, and Diana Orozco-Lapray, they talk about the different stressors (primary and secondary) that leads to psychological distress. They stated “Similarly, the Family Stress Model posits that a family’s economic hardship (primary stressors) leads to economic pressure (secondary stressors), which influences the adults’ emotional distress (mental health outcomes), which then is eventually related to disruptive parenting—including harsh, inconsistent, and uninvolved child rearing practices” (page 299). With all of this overworking and making enough money to provide for their children, the parents are unable to give the love and family connection that their children need. Chinese American children can also have a difficult time growing up in the United States too. They have to follow both the cultures their parents grew up with and the culture that in the United States. They have to know their parents language in order to be able to communicate with them and know English since they are growing up and going to school in the States. That can lead to many psychological/mental illnesses just for the child alone. In “A Longitudinal Study of Family Obligation and Depressive Symptoms among Chinese American Adolescents” by Linda P. Juang and Jeffrey T. Cookston, Juang and Cookston talk about the family obligations that are within the Chinese families. They created three hypotheses about the Chinese American adolescents and saying that the family obligation would grow stronger (Hypothesis 1), which gender you are can see which one will give off stronger family obligations (Hypothesis 2), and Chinese American adolescents who give off stronger obligations will have less depressive symptoms. For their research, they recruited Chinese American students from two different high schools. Those students were given a survey which they had to get their parents’ permission (although the parents weren’t there). The survey was given in both English and Chinese. They were asked to rate and a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being not important and 5 being the most important) on how they think family values were important to them. Some of the value examples were “Treat your parents with great respect” and “Have your parents live with you when they are older.” At the end, the results stated that gender and where you were born had nothing to do with family obligation behavior, but birth order did. In another study, “Chinese American adolescents: perceived parenting styles and adolescents’ psychosocial health” by W. Yuwen and A.C.C. Chen, they stated that Chinese American adolescents have higher levels of depressive symptoms than those of a white person. They stated “Family and parenting factors were found to be associated with Chinese American adolescents’ depressive symptoms, including family functioning (Crane et al. 2005), family conflict (Juang et al. 2007; Lim et al. 2009), supportive parenting (Kim & Ge 2000), parental control (Juang et al. 2007; Lim et al. 2009), and parental monitoring (Kim et al. 2009; Kim & Ge 2000).” Like what was stated in the previous paragraph, it said that Chinese American adolescents have less mental health and behavioral problems. The reason being is because the children are able to communicate with their parents more in which the family regulates a set of norms and just talking to one another. In Yuwen and Chen’s study, they recruited Chinese American adolescents from a Chinese school and a church. The criteria listed to be in the study was that the person had to self-identify themselves as either Chinese, Taiwanese, Chinese American, or Taiwanese American, had to be between the ages of 12 and 19, and had one parent who was born in china or Taiwan (page 237). They conducted two focus groups and the questions (containing 15 questions) were asked in either English or Mandarin (depending on the adolescents’ preference). The adolescents also had to fill out a questionnaire. Some of the questions that were included in the questionnaire were asking about adolescent’s ethnic origin, their age, sex, and what grade they were in. Other questions included whether or not the adolescent has received reduced-priced or free lunch at school, how their family structure was, their family’s immigration history, their birthplace, and what was the highest level of education of their parents. From their results, they concluded that 67% of the people who participated were female, 87% lived with their birth parents, and one person received has received free lunch. There are many factors that show how the family is taken care of and how that can affect the children. In “Chinese American Immigrant Parents’ Emotional Expression in the Family: Relations with Parents’ Cultural Orientations and Children’s Emotion-Related Regulation” by Stephen H. Chen, Qing Zhou, Alexandra Main, and Erica H. Lee, they state that the research we have that’s up to date, “cultural factors influence parents’ emotion-related behaviors in the family, which, in turn, influence children’s regulation” (page 620). Though there isn’t one that was conducted in a single study, a recent theory suggests the cultural orientation of immigrants can involve acculturation and enculturation of the immigrants’ heritage and ethnic culture. Because of the many different cultural orientations within one ethnic group, there can be different models of parenting emotional socialization practices.
Throughout their (Stephen H. Chen, Qing Zhou, Alexandra Main, and Erica H. Lee) research, they found that the use of Chinese media was used negatively for the parents to express that they were the dominant people and that the results were consistent. They also found that “lack of associations between self-reported and observed emotional expression, these findings suggest that observed expression of emotions may be a more accurate reflection of parents’ actual expression of emotions in the family context” (page 626). This shows that parents don’t show much expressions to their children and that can cause issues within the family. Another thing that the found was that parents’ patterns of encouragement and affection or anger and frustration helps determine the child’s emotional and mental regulation. The area where a Chinese family lives in can also cause distress. This is what is called a Neighborhood Economic Disadvantage. In “Neighborhood Characteristics, Parenting Styles, and Children’s Behavioral Problems in Chinese American Immigrant Families” by Erica H. Lee, Qing Zhou, Jennifer Ly, Alexandra Main, Annie Tao, and Stephen H. Chen, they stated that a neighborhood economic disadvantage relates to hardship of economic, social, and family resources that are within the neighborhood (pages 202-203). Depending on where a family lives can cause stress. This is because some Chinese families are living in poverty, they don’t receive help from the government, and the parents are unemployed. In one of their sections, they stated that parenting is one of the key processes that helps with the relationship between the family’s economic hardship and their child’s behavioral problems. With the economic issues, comes with the problems of a family’s health care. Some families don’t even know if they are able to have health care because the parents didn’t come to the United States legally. Even waiting for health insurance can take a long time, sometimes it can be delayed. In “Beyond Medical Insurance: Delayed or Forgone Care among Children in Chinese Immigrant Families” by Z. Jennifer Huang, Stella M. Yu, Xiao Wei Liu, Darwin Young, and Frank Y. Wong, they stated that cultural and language barriers in the health care system can discourage access. In their study, they recruited 20 low income Chinese individuals who work different shifts in Chinese restaurants in Virginia and Maryland. They also went a Chinese school and chose 3 classes out of the 16 classes and the parents to participate in the study. In the study, they gave out a questionnaire that included 69 multiple choice, yes/no, and open ended questions asking about their family’s SES, children’s health insurance coverage, access barriers to health care, health status, and acculturation status (page 366). From their results, they concluded that 35 out of the 43 middle class families had a family income greater than $80,000. The families that were recruited from Chinese restaurant s had incomes less than $30,000. They also stated that the reason why there are delayed or forgone health care differed and the financial problems were expressed by the families who were recruited from the Chinatown Service Center. Throughout the study they found that 73.1% of the parents kept expressing the phrase “kids can get better without seeing a doctor” (Page 371). They also expressed that they would rather ask their friends or relatives to help take care of their sick children than going to see a professional. Another result showed that 36.4% to 86.7% gave non-prescription medicine to their children. There are many health illnesses in the Chinese community. In “The Current State of Mental Health Research on Asian Americans” by Jennifer Lee, Annie Lei, and Stanley Sue, state that Asian Americans show higher levels of depression that those of White people. In “Screening for Depression in Immigrant Chinese American Elders” by Sandy Chen Stokes, Larry W. Thompson, Susan Murphy and Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, they stated that Chinese Americans have a higher suicide rate than Whites. There are many factors that can link to Chinese elders developing depression. Two of the factors that can increase a Chinese elder’s depression includes immigration and the loss of family support systems. Another factor included the lack of communication and language barriers between the elder and the health care provider. Having depression later in life can be treatable. Antidepressants and many different forms of psychotherapy have shown to be effective amongst the older adults. Though this only showed the results of white elders. There hasn’t been a case like this for the Chinese elders. There are also very few measures of depression among Chinese elders. Stokes, Thompson, Murphy, Gallagher, talks about a study conducted by Mui and Rankin which focused on a different measure of depression. The said the Mui looked into psychometric properties and sampled 50 Chinese elders living in New York City. She found that the Chinese language version of the GDS that she used showed a high consistency. As far as depression, Asian Americans can also show signs of anxiety. Lee, Lai, and Sue stated that Chinese students who recently immigrated to the United States have a higher amount of anxiety than the Chinese students who have been living in the United States longer. It also suggested that their anxiety may decrease over the course of time. Somatic Problems are also another mental health issue. They found that “In a psychiatric clinic in Taiwan, Tseng (1975) found that nearly 70% of the psychiatric outpatients presented predominantly or exclusively somatic complaints on their initial visit.” They found in a study that white psychiatric patients with depressive symptoms were only 20% compared to the 88% of Chinese patients who were somatic but gave no complaints. Lee, Lai, and Sue talks about the Chinese American Psychiatric Epidemiological Study (CAPES). CAPES has been one of the most advanced psychological projects of any Asian group. They conducted a five year project which attempted to “(1) estimate the prevalence rates of selected mental disorders among Chinese Americans, and (2) identify the factors associated with mental health problems among Chinese Americans” (Page 167). In this study, Chinese households were given questions that lasted 90 minutes. There were also follow up interviews that were conducted one year later, which showed changed changes in the person’s mental health and the factor that were came with the changes. These people were interview in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese (depending on the interviewee’s language preference). Even conducting a research can have problems. For example, there can be cross cultural issues. Cross cultural research can be an issue because each Asian group is different and have their own set of values. There can even be sampling and population issues. Even though the Asian American community is rising, it is still small because there are very small AAPI groups that can’t put into the research because there aren’t that many of them who live in the United States. In conclusion, living in the United States as a minority can be very difficult. Whether you are Chinese, Korean, or any other Asian groups living in the states, having mental health issues are serious. There are many factors that can lead up to the person’s mental illness. It can be hard: having parents who are always working, families who just immigrated to the United States, language barriers, being picked on in school because there aren’t that many AAPI’s in your school, health care etc. All these factors can lead to a Chinese American developing mental health issues that families won’t or refuse to take care of. One thing that I do wish there was more of is having more articles/studies done on the Asian American community. Since we are a growing population, I would love to see more Chinese actors on television and not just cast a non-Chinese person who looks Chinese play a Chinese role.

Work Cited Page 1. Kim, S. Y., Shen, Y., Huang, X., Wang, Y., & Orozco-Lapray, D. (2014). Chinese
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Family Psychology, 23(3), 396-404. doi:10.1037/a0015814 3. Yuwen, W., & Chen, A. C. (2013). Chinese American adolescents: Perceived parenting styles and adolescents' psychosocial health.International Nursing
Review, 60(2), 236-243. doi:10.1111/inr.12002 4. Chen, S. H., Zhou, Q., Main, A., & Lee, E. H. (2015). Chinese American immigrant parents’ emotional expression in the family: Relations with parents’ cultural orientations and children’s emotion-related regulation. Cultural Diversity And Ethnic Minority Psychology, 21(4), 619-629. doi:10.1037/cdp0000013 5. Lee, E. H., Zhou, Q., Ly, J., Main, A., Tao, A., & Chen, S. H. (2014). Neighborhood characteristics, parenting styles, and children’s behavioral problems in Chinese American immigrant families. Cultural Diversity And Ethnic Minority Psychology, 20(2), 202-212. doi:10.1037/a0034390 6. Stokes, S. C., Thompson, L. W., Murphy, S., & Gallager-Thompson, D. (2001).
Screening for depression in immigrant Chinese-American elders: Results of a pilot study. Journal Of Gerontological Social Work, 36(1-2), 27-44. doi:10.1300/J083v36n01_03 7. Lee, J., Lei, A., & Sue, S. (2001). The current state of mental health research on Asian
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