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Nonlinear Relationship Between Length of Residence and Depression in a Community-Based Sample of Vietnamese Americans

Boston College, Graduate School of Social Work, McGuinn Hall, Chestnut Hill Campus, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA; vantran{at}bc.edu

Victor Manalo

School of Social Work, California State University, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Victor T.D. Nguyen

Saint Ignatius College Preparatory, Fort Worth, TX, USA

Background: Length of residence has been viewed as an indicator of acculturation among immigrants and refugees in their host society. This study aims to test an inverted U relationship between length of residence and depression in a community-based sample of Vietnamese Americans.

Methods: Data were collected from a community-based survey of adult Vietnamese Americans living in an East Coast metropolitan area consisting of 349 respondents aged 18 and older. However, due to missing data, the actual sample in our regression analysis using listwise deletion method is 311. Among the participants, 52.1% are female (n = 182), and 47.9% are male (n = 167). The age of the respondents ranges from 18 to 73 years with the average age being 38.76 (SD = 13.76). The average number of years that the participants lived within the United States was 7.01 years (SD = 5.22).

Results: Findings from a polynomial regression analysis support the hypothesis that depression levels tend to be high during the first decade of initial resettlement. However, after approximately 12.5 years, depression levels decrease.

Conclusion: As revealed by the data and community experts, immigrants/refugees tend to suffer from higher levels of psychological problems during their first decade of resettlement. It takes more than a decade for a non-English-speaking immigrant or refugee to adjust psychologically into his/her host society.

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