The “model minority” and their discontent: Examining peer discrimination and harassment of Chinese American immigrant youth

Aim: This study explores the influence of beliefs, values and norms in Chinese family culture as they relate to attitudes and beliefs about mental health and mental health services. It examines family and acculturative stressors occurring in the immigrant’s social context on attitudes about suicidal distress and help-seeking behaviors, and focuses on appropriate forms of services for suicidal behaviors among adult immigrants experiencing suicidal behaviors. Methods: The study design is descriptive, using a qualitative approach. Six Chinese American immigrant adults who had attempted suicide participated in semi-structured interviews in Mandarin or Cantonese. The content was analyzed using a constant comparative approach. Results: Study participants exhibited various reactions to suicidal distress, attitudes about needing help and usefulness and relevance of existing intervention strategies and services that reflected influences of Chinese family culture. Interactions with family members negatively impacted study participants’ attitudes about using services and hindered pathways to care. Acculturative stressors, along with weak family ties and the absence of strong community networks exacerbated the strategies for effective services. Conclusion: This study raises the question of the efficacy of several Western-culture based service delivery models on help-seeking behaviors on such populations. Furthermore, the study discusses ethnic sensitive approaches with core roles for family, peers and community for supporting those at risk of attempting suicide and linking them to appropriate community-based services.

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Chinese American Immigrant Parents' Socialization of Emotions in Bilingual Bicultural Preschool Children

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.642417 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Shirley Huang ◽

Pui Fong Kan

Keyword(s):

Preschool Children ◽

Negative Emotion ◽

Chinese American ◽

The Other ◽

Immigrant Parents ◽

Language Background ◽

Parent Questionnaire ◽

Emotion Words ◽

Chinese Parent ◽

American Immigrant

The purpose of this study was to examine Cantonese-speaking Chinese American immigrant parents' socialization of emotions in bilingual bicultural preschool children, using a combination of a parent questionnaire and parent language samples from emotion-elicited storytelling tasks. Sixteen Cantonese-speaking parents and their children participated in this study. Children were sequential bilinguals who were exposed to Cantonese (L1) at home since birth, and then learned English (L2) at school. The Chinese parent questionnaire examined parents' emotion talk in the home, as well as the child's dual language background and language distribution. Parents' language samples in Cantonese were collected from three parent-child storytelling tasks that each elicited a different type of negative emotion (sad, angry, scared). Results from the parent questionnaire and the parent language samples were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods. In the parent questionnaire, correlation analysis revealed that parents' use of guilt emotions was not associated with any of the other emotion words, suggesting that parents may not talk about guilt as frequently as the other emotions. Results from the parents' language samples showed no significant differences between parents' number of emotion words and emotion explanations across the storytelling tasks, suggesting that parents used negative emotion words similarly across all three books. Further qualitative analysis between the parent questionnaire and the language samples revealed patterns in the way parents use Chinese emotion words with their children. Findings illustrate how the combined use of a parent questionnaire and parent language samples offer complementary information to provide a more comprehensive understanding about Chinese American immigrant parents' socialization of emotions.

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