Trajectories of Parent-Child Conflict, Racial Discrimination, and Depressive Symptoms Among Asian American Adolescents and Young Adults

Purpose: Although data on mental health problems among young Asian Americans are mixed, we can conclude that the vulnerability to mental distress among Asian Americans is at least comparable to Whites or much worse. This is in a stark contrast to the “model minority” myth that they are problem-free. Overcoming several methodological challenges in existing data (e.g., small sample sizes, cross-sectional data, and subgroup variability), this longitudinal study reports the rates of mental distress among young Filipino Americans (FA) and Korean Americans (KA) from adolescence to young adulthood and further investigates possible sources of mental distress. This study included two prominent predictors, (1) parent-child conflict, one of the universal predictors of mental distress that are applicable to all young people regardless of race/ethnicity and (2) racial discrimination, one of the group-specific predictors that may be particularly relevant to Asian Americans. This study is one of the first to investigate (1) the rates of parent-child conflict, racial discrimination, and depressive symptoms over time and (2) whether the rates of predictors predict changes in depressive symptoms. 

Methods: Data are from the Midwest Longitudinal Study of Asian American Families (ML-SAAF) project, a longitudinal survey of FA and KA youth and their parents living in a Midwest metropolitan area. This study used three waves of youth data. The first wave was collected in 2014 from 378 FA youth and 408 KA youth (N=786). The retention rates were 77% at Wave 2 in 2016 (N=604) and 82% of Wave 1 at Wave 3 in 2018 (N=641). Both predictors and outcome were measured at all three waves. Using STATA and Mplus, parallel process latent growth curve model was used to examine whether the baseline rate of predictors and the change in predictors over time predict the baseline rate of depressive symptoms and the change in depressive symptoms over time. In addition, the multi-group analysis was conducted to examine whether these relationships vary by ethnicity.

Results: After accounting for controls, the intercepts of both parent-child conflict and racial discrimination were positively associated with the intercept of depressive symptoms. That is, those who reported higher parent-child conflict and racial discrimination at the baseline also reported higher depressive symptoms at the baseline. Also, the slopes of both predictors were significantly and positively associated with the slope of depression. In other words, increased parent-child conflict and racial discrimination over time predicted increased depressive symptoms. The multi-group analysis indicates that these significant findings were not different by ethnicity.

Conclusions and Implications: This study provided crucial findings that may explain the heightened vulnerability among Asian Americans. That is, mental health distress becomes significantly worse among Asian Americans from adolescence to young adulthood and that the increase may be due in part to an increase in parent-child conflict and racial discrimination during this developmental period. Clinical interventions should target these areas to reduce mental distress. Given the surge of racist and anti-immigrant sentiments for the past few years, it is especially critical to address racial discrimination in serving Asian American young people.