Post-Migration Stresses Among Southeast Asian Refugee Youth in Canada: A Research Note

Abstract

Post-Migration Stresses Among Southeast Asian Refugee Youth in Canada : A Research Note* Nearly 280,000 refugees were admitted to Canada between 1981-1991, about 24% of whom were refugee youth under the age of 16. According to clinical and research literature, the risk of developing mental health problems such as alcohol abuse (Morgan et al., 1984), drug addiction (Amaral-Dias et al., 1981), delinquency and depression (Burke, 1982), post-traumatic stress disorder (Kinzie, 1986; Sack, 1985), and psychopathology (Kinzie et al., 1986) is higher for children in refugee families than for their host country counterparts. Psychological symptoms and rates of social pathologies such as delinquency and school drop out, are reportedly increasing among Southeast Asian youth (Chiu and Ring, 1998; Liebkind, 1996). It seems reasonable to conjecture that the stresses of flight, refugee camp internment and resettlement contribute to elevated mental health risk. However, the literature contains few studies of refugee youth's experiences of stress or of the impact of such experiences. According to studies of adult refugees, post-migration stressors such as unemployment and family separations have a more powerful effect on refugee mental health than pre-migration stressors during the first few years of resettlement (Canadian Task Force on Mental Health Issues Affecting Immigrants and Refugees, 1988). Identifying the particular stressors encountered by, and that may be deleterious to the mental health of refugee youth can contribute to the creation of ameliorative programs that will promote optimal resettlement. The current article describes a study of the stressful experiences of youth in Southeast Asian refugee families resettled in Canada. In response to the Boat People crisis, Canada admitted approximately 60,000 refugees between 1979-1981. Most of these refugees were interned in refugee camps for varying lengths of time and had little contact with the West prior to their arrival in Canada. There have been many studies focusing on the mental health of adult refugees from Southeast Asia (Beiser and Fleming, 1986; Beiser et al., 1993; Rumbaut, 1985; Westermeyer et al., 1983, 1984). In Canada, findings from a 10-year study of 1,348 SEA refugees indicated that the prevalence of major depression significantly decreased over the study period. Although unemployment, family separation and expereinces with discrimination were risk factors for depression, social contingencies and personal strengths determined whether exposure to these risks resulted in breakdown or personal fulfilment (Beiser, 1999). Little attention has, however, been paid to the effect of migration on the children of these refugees. A review of the literature suggests that after resettling in their host countries, Southeast Asian youth face an array of stressors: school, family, and social. School stressors include language and school adjustment (Lee, 1988). A study focusing on life stress of Southeast Asian high school students in America found that personal and parental pressure to perform well academically and worries about future career ranked high among identified stressful events (DuongTran et al., 1996). Family relations comprise an important domain of stressors. DuongTran et al.,(1996) found that Cambodian adolescents. perceived parents' strict discipline concerning social life as highly stressful. Another study found that Vietnamese-born university students reported lower quality of parental relationships than their American-born counterparts (Dinh et al., 1994). Moreover, dissociation from tight family bonds has been associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression in the SEA youth population (Liebkind, 1996). Other family-related stressors identified in the literature include conflicts concerning career choices, and conflicts caused by role reversal (Lee, 1988). Adjusting to the social milieu of the new country can be difficult. …