Abstract
Faith has been shown to serve a protective role in the mental health of African Americans and European Americans. However, little research has examined whether any association exists in Asian Americans. Using the National Latino and Asian American Study dataset, we examined the effect of religious attendance on the mental health of Asian Americans in the United States. The present study focused on Chinese Americans because they are the largest Asian American group. The results revealed that almost 80% of the respondents were foreign-born and that their English proficiency had a positive association with their self-rated mental health. Being male correlated significantly to higher levels of mental health self-rating. After controlling for known predictive variables, such as demographics, cultural and immigration variables, more frequent religious attendance significantly predicted higher self-rating of mental health. These findings suggest that faith may have a unique protective role in Chinese Americans’ mental health.
Highlights
The population of Chinese Americans consists of immigrant descendants or new immigrants from various regions in Asia and other parts of the world
This study examined the relationship of religious involvement and mental health in Chinese Americans, measured with self-reported mental health using the data from National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS)
Results showed that the Step 1 model significantly predicted self-rating of mental health for the sample
Summary
The population of Chinese Americans consists of immigrant descendants or new immigrants from various regions in Asia and other parts of the world. In the 19th century, the first major influx of Chinese arrived in the United States (US). This first group, comprising mostly farmers, emigrated from Southern China to help build US railroads (Chen, 1940). Responding to an anti-Chinese lobby, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Law in 1882 to ban the Chinese labor force (Chan, 1991). During the 20th century, the population of Chinese Americans increased to three million which was slightly more than the number of Filipino Americans (US Census, 2004). The numbers of each group were similar, notwithstanding the much larger population of China, because of the long-term exclusion of Chinese immigrants
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