Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 2:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Cultural Issues in Mental Health

Mediating Effects of Parental Support and Peer Support on Psychological Distress among the Youth of Immigrants

Purpose: Despite high levels of acculturative stressors-- parent-child conflict and perceived discrimination-- frequently observed among immigrant youth, some recent studies have revealed that psychological adjustment of immigrant youth is similar to or even more resilient than that of non-immigrant youth. The evidence implies that some protective influences associated with immigration status, such as social support, may mediate the deleterious impacts of acculturative stressors on psychological well-being of immigrant youth. This study examined whether perceived parental support and perceived peer support directly affect psychological distress and mediate the impact of acculturative stressors on psychological distress among the youth of immigrants and how the mediating effects differ across two generation groups: first (foreign-born with foreign-born parents) and second (native-born with foreign-born parents).

Methods: I analyzed two waves of longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of 584 youth in grades 7 through 12, using National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, 1994-1995. A path model was specified with socio-demographic characteristics (exogenous variables), parent-child conflict and perceived discrimination as stressors (the first level of endogenous variables), perceived parental support and perceived peer support as mediators (the second level of endogenous variables), and psychological distress as an outcome (the ultimate endogenous variable). Using a Structural Equation Modeling method, a series of path analyses was conducted separately for each generation group to estimate direct effects and mediating effects of perceived parental support and perceived peer support.

Results: For the first generation (N=159), I found a significant direct effect of perceived parental support on psychological distress (b_standardized= -0.17; p< .05). I also found a significant indirect effect of parent-child conflict (b_standardized=0.04; p<.05; 33% of total effect of parent-child conflict), mediated by perceived parental support, but no significant direct effect of parent-child conflict on psychological distress. These results indicate a strong mediation of perceived parental support in the effect of parent-child conflict. The analysis also revealed that no direct or mediating effect of perceived peer support was significant among the first generation youth. For the second generation (N=425), I found no mediating effect of either parental or peer support to be significant. Instead, I found that only the direct effect of perceived peer support on psychological distress was significant (b_standardized= -0.11; p<.05).

Implications: The significant roles of parental support among first generation youth may stem from the emphasis on parent-child centered family relationships that are frequently observed among traditional immigrant families. The strong effect of peer support but the weak impact of parental support among second generation youth, however, may reflect the acculturation gap between parent and child, and the youth's compensatory attachment to peers. Generational differences in relative importance and roles of parental support and peer support may require different intervention approaches for two generation groups. To be more effective, social work interventions for first generation youth can focus more on enhancing supportive relationships with parents by reducing parent-child conflicts. Practitioners can also improve their service for second generation youth by considering peer relations in their assessments and interventions.

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