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Sizhe Liu and Wei Zhang

Often seek comfort from religion × 1.02 (0.21, 5.04)
Immigration ≤ 12 years
Often seek comfort from religion × Fair/ 0.05(0.01, .20)***
poor English
Weekly attendance × Immigration ≤ 12 0.29 (0.05, 1.55)
years
Weekly attendance × Fair/poor English 1.11 (0.29, 4.17)
Notes: Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals (in parentheses) are provided; †p< 0.1, *p< 0.05, **p< 0.01, ***p< 0.001 (two tailed tests); a
reference groups.

their self-esteem and self-worth, which in turn, may lead to psychiatric disorders and
even suicidal ideation.
Surprisingly, our finding on age at immigration does not support either the
acculturative stress model (Berry, Kim, Minde et al., 1987) or the life course
perspective. Acculturative stress model predicts that acculturative stress should be
more severe among those who arrived in the U.S. in an older age as older immigrants
often have already developed social networks and have internalized cultural/social
norms from their country of origin. As a result, a conflict between two sets of norms
and values is likely to emerge (Breslau, Borges, Hagar et al., 2009). They may find
themselves hard to accommodate a strange or even a hostile environment in the host
country. Within this environment it is even harder to develop a social network and
receive social support as coping resources for stress (Rogler, Cortes, and Malgady,
1991).
On the other hand, those younger age immigrants tend to spend most of their
adolescence and early adulthood in the U.S. The life course perspective emphasizes
the importance of these life stages to develop emotional and cognitive abilities (Giedd,
2004; Gogtay, Giedd, Lusk, et al., 2004; Mossakowski, 2007). These stages are
also vulnerable stages in the life course when social network and coping resources
may not be fully developed to handle stressful life events. Research shows that the
developmental context that leads individuals to a different “life course trajectory” may
vary by age at immigration (Fuligni, 2004; Rumbaut, 2004). Early socioeconomic
developmental contexts and the experience of dealing with stress have a long reaching
effect on the development of stress coping abilities as adults (Hayward and Gorman,
2004). These younger immigrants have a greater chance of facing several unique
psychosocial stressors such as alienation, aggression, anxiety, low self-esteem and
intergeneration conflicts (Lynch, 1992). Also, the discrepancy between the dominant
values of their home countries expressed in their household or communities and the
American values manifested by their peers at schools may serve as chronic stressors
resulting in mental health problems in adulthood (Fuligni, 2004; Leu, Yen, Gansky
et al., 2008). However, none of these two perspectives were supported by our data.
Hence, alternative models need to be developed and tested in future research to
continuously disentangle the unique effect of age at immigration on mental health
status among Asian-American immigrants.
Most importantly, we found that religious coping (frequently seeking comfort from
religion) provides a stress-buffering effect for the association between limited English
proficiency and suicidal ideation among Asian-American immigrants. This finding,
to some extent, supports the stress-buffering model. The question remains unclear is
why only religious coping buffers the detrimental effect of limited English proficiency
on suicidal ideation. One possible explanation has to do with our measurement for
religious involvement that may distort and underestimate the stress-buffering effects
of religion (Schnittker, 2001). Research shows that measures of religious involvement
may have a better prediction power over mental health if they were measured in a more
direct way (Pargament, Ensing, Falgout, et al., 1990). In this regard, perhaps if we
include measures such as specific religious guidance through religious teaching (instead
of using religious affiliation), and church-based social support (instead of religious

International Journal of Population Studies 2017, Volume 3, Issue 1 35