Asian American women's resilience: An integrative review

Abstract

Asian American women face unique stressors that threaten their overall health and well-being. However, resilience is a phenomenon that allows individuals to develop positive adaptation despite adversities and challenges. This integrative review is conducted in order to explore the current state of knowledge regarding the resilience of Asian American women. Twelve databases were used to identify related articles: Academic Search Premier, CI-NAHL, ERIC, Ethnic NewsWatch, GenderWatch, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global, ProQuest Sociological Abstracts, PsycINFO, PubMed, SAGE (Psychology and Sociology collections), Scopus, and Web of Science. Twenty-one research studies met the inclusion criteria of the integrative review. Five common themes emerged from the analysis of the studies: (a) resilience as conceptualized as a coping strategy, (b) resilience as related to social support and network, (c) resilience as an enduring phenomenon, (d) resilience as connected to bicultural identity, and (e) resilience as an emancipatory perspective and experience. These themes imply that resilience is a developmental process, culture has a significant influence on resilience, and Asian American women are a vulnerable and marginalized group. Further recommendations for nursing practice and research are discussed as related to these implications. Keywords: Asian American women, coping, resilience, resiliencyResilience is the ability to process and manage experiences that buffer the negative effects of stress; it allows individuals to overcome challenges and helps them develop positive adaptation skills despite setbacks (Dyer & McGuinness, 1996;Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000;Rutter, 1993 Asian/Pacific Islander women living in the United States-whether newcomers, immigrants, permanent residents, or citizens-face specific mental health challenges. For example, in a national survey, AAPIW had the highest rate compared to White, Black, and Hispanic women of reporting trauma from being a refugee or civilian in a war zone (Roberts, Gilman, Breslau, Breslau, & Koenen, 2011). AAPIW hold more negative cognitions (i.e., views about the self, the world, and self-blame) than their White counterparts about sexual abuse events that occurred in the past, which increases their likelihood of developingCreative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can't change them in any way or use them commercially. (Curtin, Warner, & Hedegaard, 2016). Suicide is the second leading cause of death among AAPIW aged 20 to 24 years (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013). In a study of acculturated AAPIW, over 40% of participants reported currently experiencing moderate to severe depression while 57% of these AAPIW did not have depression (Augsberger, Yeung, Dougher, & Hahm, 2015). Studies have shown that stress rela...

Resilience, Acculturative Stress and Family Norms against Disclosure of Mental Health Problems among Foreign-Born Filipino American Women

“…On the other hand, there are studies showing that women of different ethnicities (i.e., Hispanic and African American women) are more resilient than Asian American women (Clauss-Ehlers et al, 2006; Kwong et al, 2015). This variability of the levels of resilience among women from different ethnicities suggests that the buffering nature of Asian American women’s resilience against stress varies across different cultural contexts (Reyes and Constantino, 2016). Hence, we explore further the effect of resilience on acculturative stress below.…”

The Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Cognitive-Emotional Regulation, Resilience, and Self-control Strategies in Divorced Women

“…It is a stable trajectory against the threat of adverse events, active and efficient participation in the environment. Resilience refers to one's ability to strike a bio-psychological balance against threatening events [11].…”

Shifting mediates the relationship between ethnic identity, acculturation status, and racism-related stress among Asian American women.

“…Research specifically on Asian American women’s acculturation (i.e., behavioral, cognitive, or affective change as a function of contact between the new and the culture of origin; Gamst et al, 2011; Kim & Abreu, 2001), enculturation (i.e., one’s orientation to their culture of origin; Le & Raposa, 2019; Zhang & Moradi, 2012) and their relationship to racism-related stress is limited. Reviews of this literature (e.g., Constantino & Reyes, 2016) suggest that bicultural identity may be key to promote resilience and cope with racism-related stress among Asian American women. Most studies on Asian Americans in general that have examined racism-related, acculturative, or social stress (Concepcion et al, 2013; Le & Raposa, 2019; Liu & Suyemoto, 2016; Miller et al, 2011) suggest that identification with both the new culture and the culture of origin may provide direct benefits for those coping with racist assaults and their concomitant stress (Berry et al, 2006).…”