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Impact of Life Events and Difficulties on the Mental Health of Chinese Immigrant Women

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Abstract

This study examined the life events and difficulties inherent to the immigration process and the sources of social support that influenced mental health. A six-month longitudinal study, utilizing a detailed semi-structured interview protocol and standardized questionnaires, was conducted with a group of Chinese women who had migrated to Canada with their spouses in the last decade. All of the women and all of their spouses experienced major downward mobility. Correspondingly, the most frequent negative life event was employment-related and the most frequent difficulty was the financial strain of living below the poverty line, factors which significantly predicted the women’s mental health. Social support had neither a main effect on mental health nor a buffer effect on the relationship between life events and difficulties and mental health. Implications for immigration and settlement policy are discussed.

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Notes

  1. One spouse was completing his Ph.D. in China and was expected to join the family within the next several months. Two others had returned to living and working full-time in China, commuting to Canada a few times a year to visit their families. Two spouses were living and working in the United States indefinitely.

  2. Annual household income correlated significantly with a number of demographic variables within the sample including length of time in Canada (r = 0.57), English language fluency (r = 0.38), likelihood of spouse being employed (r = 0.31), participants’ occupational status (r = 0.44), spouses’ occupational status (r = 0.71), and GHQ psychological distress scores at Time 1 (r = −0.31), all P < 0.05.

  3. This was a conservative estimate of the poverty line based on Statistics Canada’s Low Income Cut-offs (LICOs)—an index which takes into account family size within communities of various sizes [43] For example, the 2004 before-tax LICO for a family of three living in a community with a population over 500,000 was $36,126; for a family size of two it was $25,319

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported, in part, by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Award to Taryn N. Tang. Additional support was provided by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Institutional Grant to Brenda B. Toner. We thank Kay Deaux for her helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Equity and Health Research Section, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250 College Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5T 1R8

    Taryn N. Tang & Brenda B. Toner

  2. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Keith Oatley

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  1. Taryn N. Tang
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Correspondence to Taryn N. Tang.

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Tang, T.N., Oatley, K. & Toner, B.B. Impact of Life Events and Difficulties on the Mental Health of Chinese Immigrant Women. J Immigrant Minority Health 9, 281–290 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-007-9042-1

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