Stages of Acculturation as Reflected By Depression Reduction in Immigrant Nursing Students

Abstract

Depression amongst immigrant students from the former Soviet Union was assessed as an index of the stage of their acculturation into the new host society, Israel. At the beginning of the first year of nursing school, three groups completed the Beck Depression Inventory. The two groups of immigrants: immigrant nurses preparing for licensing (N = 26) and immigrant students (N = 16), reported mild levels of depression, while Israeli students (N = 33) were significantly less depressed, within the normal range. Six months later, both immigrant groups were within the normal range, the immigrant nurses group showing the greatest decrease in depression. This change may be explained by adaptation to the educational setting, mastering the host society's language and social anchorage. The importance of background variables for predicting depression reduction is examined. The findings are discussed within the framework of multistage models of acculturation and the implications for counseling immigrant students are presented.

Health situation of migrant and minority nurses: A systematic review

“…While six studies focussed on somatic outcomes [61–63, 65, 70, 71], eight articles addressed psychosocial outcomes [41, 64, 66–69, 72, 73]. Physiological responses of nurses to anxiety, anger and happiness [61–63] like elevated blood pressure were observed but also physical reactions like back pain [65].…”

“…Simpson and Severson (2000) and Tak et al (2010) examined injury rates among nurses [70, 71]. As direct health-related psychosocial outcomes perceived stress at work, job strain and levels of depression [66, 68] and distress [72] were identified. The level of job satisfaction and autonomy [73] as an indirect health-related psychosocial outcome was assessed by Hayne et al (2009).…”

“…Besides the job content questionnaire [66], the Nursing Work Index [73], the Occupation Stress Inventory [73], the Demands of immigration (D.I.) scale [72], the Ways of Coping Checklist [64], and the Beck Depression Inventory [61, 63, 67], self-developed questionnaires were used for data collection [41, 62, 65, 67, 69–71].…”

“…Five studies met all criteria according to MMAT [65, 67, 69, 71, 72], three studies reached 3 out of 4 stars [41, 68, 70] and the remaining six met one or two criteria [61–64, 66, 73]. Among the quantitative descriptive studies, only Ghilan et al (2013) and Tak et al (2010) applied an adequate sampling strategy, provided a representative sample, used appropriate measurements and reached an acceptable response rate [65, 71].…”

“…The recruitment process in four studies [61–63, 66] was potentially affected by selection bias, since the study participants were chosen as a convenience sample. An acceptable response rate was not reached or not clearly identifiable in seven studies [41, 61–64, 66, 73].…”