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The impact of perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms and the role of differentiated social support among immigrant populations in South Korea

BACKGROUND: Previous studies demonstrated a positive association between perceived discrimination and mental health problems among immigrants in countries that traditionally host immigrants. Recent trends in international migration show that there has been a significant increase in immigrant populat...

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Autores principales: Ra, Chaelin Karen, Huh, Jimi, Finch, Brian Karl, Cho, Youngtae
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6329122/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30634987
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-019-0910-9
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author Ra, Chaelin Karen
Huh, Jimi
Finch, Brian Karl
Cho, Youngtae
author_facet Ra, Chaelin Karen
Huh, Jimi
Finch, Brian Karl
Cho, Youngtae
author_sort Ra, Chaelin Karen
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Previous studies demonstrated a positive association between perceived discrimination and mental health problems among immigrants in countries that traditionally host immigrants. Recent trends in international migration show that there has been a significant increase in immigrant populations in East Asian countries. These newer host countries have different social contexts from traditional ones, yet mental health among these immigrants and its relationship to discrimination are under-researched. Thus, this study aimed to examine the association between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms among immigrants in one of the newer host countries, South Korea. Moreover, we investigated if differentiated social support (ethnic, host or other support) serves as a moderator of discrimination for depressive symptoms. METHODS: This study used survey data from the 2012 Korean Social Survey on Foreign Residents (N = 1068), restricted to adults 20 years or older. Multiple linear regression models were conducted to estimate the association between perceived discrimination, social support, and depressive symptoms among immigrants in South Korea. RESULTS: Perceived discrimination showed a strong positive association with depressive symptoms among immigrants, and ethnic and host support was directly positively associated with depressive symptoms. Furthermore, ethnic support moderated the effects of perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms. CONCLUSION: Community-level interventions providing immigrants opportunities to increase social networking members from the same country as well as the native-born in a host country may be helpful resources for improving mental health among immigrants in South Korea. Also, raising awareness of racial discrimination among members in South Korea would be crucial.
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spelling pubmed-63291222019-01-16 The impact of perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms and the role of differentiated social support among immigrant populations in South Korea Ra, Chaelin Karen Huh, Jimi Finch, Brian Karl Cho, Youngtae Int J Equity Health Research BACKGROUND: Previous studies demonstrated a positive association between perceived discrimination and mental health problems among immigrants in countries that traditionally host immigrants. Recent trends in international migration show that there has been a significant increase in immigrant populations in East Asian countries. These newer host countries have different social contexts from traditional ones, yet mental health among these immigrants and its relationship to discrimination are under-researched. Thus, this study aimed to examine the association between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms among immigrants in one of the newer host countries, South Korea. Moreover, we investigated if differentiated social support (ethnic, host or other support) serves as a moderator of discrimination for depressive symptoms. METHODS: This study used survey data from the 2012 Korean Social Survey on Foreign Residents (N = 1068), restricted to adults 20 years or older. Multiple linear regression models were conducted to estimate the association between perceived discrimination, social support, and depressive symptoms among immigrants in South Korea. RESULTS: Perceived discrimination showed a strong positive association with depressive symptoms among immigrants, and ethnic and host support was directly positively associated with depressive symptoms. Furthermore, ethnic support moderated the effects of perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms. CONCLUSION: Community-level interventions providing immigrants opportunities to increase social networking members from the same country as well as the native-born in a host country may be helpful resources for improving mental health among immigrants in South Korea. Also, raising awareness of racial discrimination among members in South Korea would be crucial. BioMed Central 2019-01-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6329122/ /pubmed/30634987 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-019-0910-9 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Ra, Chaelin Karen
Huh, Jimi
Finch, Brian Karl
Cho, Youngtae
The impact of perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms and the role of differentiated social support among immigrant populations in South Korea
title The impact of perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms and the role of differentiated social support among immigrant populations in South Korea
title_full The impact of perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms and the role of differentiated social support among immigrant populations in South Korea
title_fullStr The impact of perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms and the role of differentiated social support among immigrant populations in South Korea
title_full_unstemmed The impact of perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms and the role of differentiated social support among immigrant populations in South Korea
title_short The impact of perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms and the role of differentiated social support among immigrant populations in South Korea
title_sort impact of perceived discrimination on depressive symptoms and the role of differentiated social support among immigrant populations in south korea
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6329122/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30634987
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-019-0910-9
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