Distress under Duress: The Relationship between Campus Climate and Depression in Asian American College Students

Abstract

❖ Student perceptions of negative campus climate were predictive of Asian American students' depression levels in spite of students' entering proclivities toward depression and in spite of varying institutional types. In addition, these findings were consistent whether individual Asian American perceptions of campus climate were entered into the equation or whether institutional levels of campus perceptions (which included all racial and ethnic groups) were entered into the equation. Therefore, higher education institutions that are perceived by students to discriminate against individuals based on race or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or disability may put their Asian American students at risk for severe psychological consequences. Implications for mental health services are discussed.While many higher education institutions across the country have made efforts at becoming "inclusive" multicultural learning environments, incidents of discrimination and prejudice continue to be prob-74

The Relationships of Racial Identity and Gender Role Conflict to Self-Esteem of Asian American Undergraduate Men

“…Self-esteem is an important and commonly used component of psychological well-being (Good, Robertson, Fitzgerald, Stevens, & Bartels, 1996;Sharpe & Heppner, 1991;Yip, 2003). The psychological well-being of students is important to consider with regard to retention and reducing crisis management cases (Cress & Ikeda, 2003). The study also expands the body of knowledge surrounding self-esteem by examining a population previously not considered.…”

“…Suzuki described the perfidious foreigner image as one in which Asian Americans are duplicitous, scheming, and untrustworthy. In a couple of reports about Asian Pacific Americans in higher education (Cress & Ikeda, 2003;Sue, 1994), these stereotypes were described to work together to negatively affect students. Stories of lack of language assistance, suspicions of cheating, and unrealistically high academic expectations by family, professors, and peers combined to create a stressful environment for Asian American students (Cress & Ikeda; Sue).…”

“…Racial identity and gender identity have been shown to be related to students' psychological well-being (Cress & Ikeda, 2003;Kim et al, 1996), and more particularly to their self-esteem (Alvarez & Helms, 2001). This study focused on self-esteem since it was often used to operationalize psychological well-being in other studies (Parham & Helms;Sharpe & Heppner;Smith & Betz;Utsey, Ponterotto, Reynolds, & Cancelli, 2000;Yip, 2003).…”

“…Research has already shown the importance of racial identity development to psychosocial tasks and general well-being (Chang & Yeh, 2003;Cress & Ikeda, 2003;Pope, 2000). With the growing numbers of Asian American students in higher education, there is an increased importance to understand this heterogeneous community.…”

“…Depending on the saliency of ethnic identity or racial identity to the student, its effect on self-esteem will vary (Yip). Recognizing the importance of race in a university setting, particularly with Asian American students where they are often left out of the Black-White dialogue (Cress & Ikeda, 2003), serves not only to legitimize their experiences but encourages their racial identity development which has shown to relate to positive mental health (Alvarez & Yeh). The frustration exhibited by Asian American undergraduate men, detailed in the literature review, should be a cause of concern for student affairs administrators as they develop culturally appropriate developmental programs (J. W. Chan, 1998;Chang & Yeh, 2003).…”