Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 2:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Asian Americans: No Model Minority

The Effect of Intergenerational Conflict and Racial Discrimination on Depression in Filipino American Adolescents

Purpose Filipinos comprise the second largest Asian ethnic group in the United States, and number 2. 4 million. In spite of their significant size, the mental health literature on this group is extremely sparse. The current presentation focuses on Filipino American adolescents and assesses the contribution of two factors that have previously been demonstrated to influence the mental health of Asian Americans: intergenerational conflict and racial discrimination. The majority of Filipino American parents are immigrants who tend to retain traditional Filipino cultural values. In contrast, their children acculturate more quickly to majority American culture because they are developmentally more susceptible to environmental influences, and have more opportunities to engage with the majority culture. Over time, this differential acculturation results in intergenerational conflict. Furthermore, because of easily identifiable physical characteristics, Filipino adolescents may suffer from racial discrimination. Both intergenerational conflict and racial discrimination have been shown to be risk factors for poor mental health in Asian Americans. But their association in Filipino Americans remains unknown. The current study addresses this gap in this literature.

Methods The data were collected as part of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study. The 716 Filipino participants were recruited primarily from schools in the San Diego metropolitan area. They were evenly divided between males (50.4%) and females (49.6%), with a mean age of 17.37 (SD=.92). 434 of them were born in the United States, and among the overseas-born, their mean age of migration was 7.23 (SD=4.41). Intergenerational Conflict was assessed by four items, such as, “I get in trouble because my way of doing things is different from that of my parents,” with a possible range of scores from 4 to 16. Discrimination was assessed by three items that inquired whether the adolescent had been discriminated by teachers, students, and counselors. The total possible responses ranged from 0 to 3. Depression was assessed by four items from the Center for Epidemologic Studies - Depression Scale. A sample item was, during the last week, such as “I felt depressed.” The possible range of scores was from 0 to 12.

Results and Implications The mean intergenerational conflict level was 7.55 (SD=2.63). Of the sample, 21% reported discrimination by teachers was 21%, 41.2% by other students, and 7.9% by counselors. The total mean level of discrimination was .70 (SD=.86). The mean CES-D depression score was 2.89 (SD=2.58), and consistent with the existing literature, girls were significantly more depressed than boys. The hypothesized effect of intergenerational conflict and racial discrimination on depression was tested using a multiple regression, controlling for sex. The model was significant [Adjusted R-Squared = .14, F(3, 702)=40.12, p<.001]. As predicted, family conflict and racial discrimination significantly increased depression level (standardized beta = .28, and standardized beta = .13, p<.001, respectively, one-tailed test). These findings suggest the need for community-based programs to ameliorate intergenerational conflict and combat racial discrimination in order to enhance the well-being of Filipino American adolescents.

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