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Immigration-related stressors and mental health problems among Asian-American Immigrants

services attendance), we could find a more salient stress-buffering effect of religious
involvement. With current data, however, these speculations are unable to be tested.
Another important question is why this stress-buffering effect only exists between
limited English proficiency and suicidal ideation. Why religious coping does not
work to reduce the high risk of 12-month depressive disorder among those with
limited English proficiency? In other words, under what conditions could religious
coping buffer the detrimental effect of stressors on mental health? Some have argued
that religion may have stress-buffering effects only under extreme circumstances as
individuals often rely more on tangible secular coping resources to deal with moderate
stressful conditions (Schnittker, 2001). For instance, religious teaching may be more
useful in interpreting events that are beyond the range of daily life experience than
events that could be attributed to “identifiable and mundane causes” (Schnittker, 2001:
396). Accordingly, although both 12-month depressive disorder and suicidal ideation
are mental health problems, the latter is more severe and extreme than the former.
Perhaps, for Asian-American immigrants, social support from their families and
communities is the primary resource to help them cope with daily hassles and normal
stressors. Suicidal ideation, however, occurs when stressful events trigger the feeling
of desperation more frequent and severe than usual that is beyond the range of one’s
family and community members’ capacities. Under this extreme circumstance when
the tangible secular resources are likely to be exhausted, religion becomes one of the
last resorts.
The current study has several limitations. First, our findings are based on cross-
sectional data. Therefore, we are unable to address causal relationships. Second,
measures of English proficiency, religious coping, depressive disorder and suicidal
ideation are heavily relied on self-reports that are likely to be influenced by
respondents’ differential understanding and interpretation of the survey questions. Last
but not the least, given the small sample sizes for various Asian ethnic groups in the
NLAAS, we are unable to examine the possible variability in the relationship between
immigration-related stressors and mental health as well as in the stress buffering ability
of religion across different ethnic groups.

5 Conclusions

Despite these limitations, the current study provides a comprehensive understanding
of whether immigration-related stressors are associated with severe mental health
problems and how individual religious involvement moderates the associations.
Although religious coping only provides stress-buffering effect for the association
between limited English proficiency and suicidal ideation, the effect of religion should
be aware of and emphasized in the clinical setting. For instance, adequate training
needs to be provided for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to help
them better integrate religiosity/spirituality into the clinical practice in order to offer
more effective treatments. In addition, being sensitive to patients’ religious/spiritual
needs may also work to encourage them to seek professional help. This is particularly
relevant to Asian Americans, the racial/ethnic group showing a significant lower rate of
mental health service utilization than others (Abe-Kim, Takeuchi, Hong et al., 2007).
Authors Contributions

First author: research design, data analysis, and manuscript writing. Second author:
research design and manuscript writing.

Conflict of Interest and Funding
No conflict of interest was reported by all authors.

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