The Mediating Effect of Perceived Social Support between Depression and School Adjustment Among Refugee Children in South Korea

Background and Purpose: Since enactment of Law on Refugees in 2013, South Korea has seen a sharp increase of asylum-seeking applicants. According to Korea Ministry of Justice, as of the end of 2016, there were 1,015 children under 18 who were refugee status applicants, 169 recognized refugees, and 238 humanitarian status holders. Refugee children face uprooting process, which may create various psychosocial problems such as depression, traumas, acculturative stress, and racial discrimination. Children are particularly vulnerable to various psychosocial problems due to their minority status in an asylum-seeking country and lack of psychosocial resources to cope with difficulties in the displacement process. There are however a lack of empirical data on this population in Korea. This study aims to test the mediating role of perceived social support in the relationship between depression and school adjustment among refugee children in Korea, so as to draw implication for social work practice and policy.

Methods: The participants in this study were 65 refugee children under 18 years old. Refugee children in this study included refugee status applicants, recognized refugees, and humanitarian status holders in South Korea. The participants were recruited via purposive sampling method at non-governmental agencies which have established working relationships with this population. Authors explained research purpose and contents, their free will to agree, participate, and withdraw to the participants. A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted from mid-July to the end of October in 2017. This study obtained full approval of IRB at a university in Seoul, Korea. Authors used 1) depression scale, consisted of 16 items (K-YSR), 2) school adjustment by KYPS which had 4 items, and 3) perceived social support from modified Children’s Social Support that had 18 items. Each measure had 3 or 4 point Likert scale. Their Cronbach a were .77, .55, and .84 respectively. Authors used Baron & Kenny’s method and Sobel test to verify mediating effects.

Results: Authors found a complete mediating effect of social support in the relationship between depression and school adjustment among refugee children. More specifically, in the first step, depression significantly decreased school adjustment after controlling age, Korean language skill, social discrimination, and nationality (β=-2.449, p<0.05). Second, there was a negative relationship between depression and social support (β=-3.131, p<0.01). Third, social support was found to have a complete mediating effect on the relationship between depression and school adjustment (β=5.619, p<0.000). The result from Sobel test also confirms our findings that perceived social support had statistically significant mediating effect (Z=-2.74, p<0.01).

Conclusions and Implications: Our findings clearly indicate the necessity of professional intervention for refugee children in order to reduce negative effects of depression on school adjustment by enhancing social support among refugee children in Korea. In fact, our findings confirms other studies in Western countries, which indicate social support mediated negative effects of trauma and depression on refugee children’s adjustment in an asylum-seeking country. Social work and human service agencies in Korea must develop strategies to enhance social support systems to ease their school adjustment while reducing depression among refugee children.