Acculturation and Self-Rated Mental Health Among Latino and Asian Immigrants in the United States: A Latent Class Analysis

Abstract

This study assesses variations in acculturation experiences by identifying distinct acculturation classes, and investigates the role of these acculturation classes for self-rated mental health among Latino and Asian immigrants in the United States. Using 2002-2003 the National Latino and Asian American Study, Latent Class Analysis is used to capture variations in immigrant classes (recent arrivals, separated, bicultural and assimilated), and OLS regressions are used to assess the link between acculturation classes and self-rated mental health. For both Latinos and Asians, bicultural immigrants reported the best mental health, and separated immigrants and recent arrivals reported the worst mental health. The findings also reveal group differences in acculturation classes, whereby Latino immigrants were more likely to be in the separated class and recent arrivals class relative to Asian immigrants. While there was not a significant group difference in self-rated mental health at the bivariate level, controlling for acculturation classes revealed that Latinos report better self-rated mental health than Asians. Thus, Latino immigrants would actually have better self-rated mental health than their Asian counterparts if they were not more likely to be represented in less acculturated classes (separated class and recent arrivals) and/or as likely to be in the bicultural class as their Asian counterparts. Together the findings underscore the nuanced and complex nature of the acculturation process, highlighting the importance of race differences in this process, and demonstrate the role of acculturation classes for immigrant group differences in self-rated mental health.

Sociocultural Adaptation Profiles of Ethnic Minority Senior High School Students in Mainland China: A Latent Class Analysis

“…However, these traditional methods of dividing scores are not uniform and therefore subjective, so the comparison of classification results between different studies is almost impossible. To avoid the subjectivity of classification, latent class analysis (LCA) has been increasingly performed to explore variations in cross-cultural adaptation experiences and to identify different adaptation classes [39][40][41]. LCA is a technique used to classify observations based on patterns of categorical responses.…”

School anxiety and depression among immigrant youth in America: Differences by region of birth and language proficiency

“…Language is another source of acculturative stress, as individuals may be excluded from participation in the broader society or unable to understand cultural practices due to inability to speak English. This relationship was found by Bulut and Gayman (), who used latent class analysis to identify patterns of acculturation among Asian and Latino immigrants. Their “separated” class was composed of immigrants who did not speak English and had the lowest self‐rated mental health whereas their “assimilated” class included individuals more likely to speak English and had the highest self‐rated mental health.…”

Posttraumatic growth among childhood cancer survivors: Associations with ethnicity, acculturation, and religious service attendance

“…Having a strong sense of ethnic identity has been associated with self-efficacy and positive coping, feelings of belonging, and is thought to be protective of adverse mental health functioning 31 , which may support the development of PTG. Previous work by Berry identified distinctstrategies that contribute to individuals’ acculturative typologies such that they may assimilate (adopt the dominant culture and distance from the culture of origin), separate (the opposite of assimilate), integrate (embrace both cultures) or be marginalized (lose all cultural affiliation) 10 .Though this method of categorization has been debated, various studies have verified the existence of these categories in unique samples and have found that those who integrate tend to have more positive health outcomes such as increased mental health, self-esteem and coping-efficacy 25 , supporting our findings.Future research should examine other culturallyinformed beliefs such as support seeking and perceptions of disease (e.g., fatalism) which could also impact growth and wellbeing in the aftermath of a traumatic health event 29 .…”

“…Language in which survey was completed was not included as a covariate because only 6 participants completed the survey in Spanish. The dependent variable was PTG (ordinal categories determined by quartiles), and independent variables included ethnicity, RSA, and the Hispanic and Anglo acculturation subscales.The interaction of Hispanic and Anglo orientation was alsotested to explorethe joint effect on PTG, given that biculturalism (high Hispanic orientation and high Anglo orientation) has been associated with health outcomes 25 .In order to provide meaningful and interpretable results, we estimatedprobabilities of reportingthe highest quartile PTG score (scores ≥ 44) for variables that were significant at the p<0.05 level, which were calculatedusing the estimates from each multivariable analysis by simulation using 1000 randomly drawn sets of estimates from a sampling distribution with the mean equal to maximum likelihood point estimates, variance equal to the variance-covariance matrix of the estimates, and covariates setat their mean values 26 . Listwise deletion resulted in 21 missing across all variables for a total sample size of 214 in the multivariable model including all subjects and 112 in the Hispanic-only model.…”