The Expression of Depressive Symptoms Across Cultures

Depression is a debilitating mental disorder that affects people across many cultures. However, people from different cultures may display their depressive symptoms in different ways. For example, depressed people from one culture may display their symptoms through the inability to think or concentrate. People from another culture may show their depression through poor physical health . The first goal of this project is to understand whether there are cultural differences in how depressive symptoms are expressed. Our second goal is to study the risk factors that cause depression, and whether these differ across cultures. Lastly, we will investigate whether particular depressive symptoms are associated with particular cultural factors. Depressive symptoms of Asian-Americans will be compared to European Americans. We expect to find that shame and cultural isolation will predict depression in Asian Americans, but not in European Americans. We also predict that European Americans will have more physical symptoms of depression than Asian-Americans.

Faculty Supervisor:

Li-Jun Ji

Student:

Partner:

Villanova University

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

Queen's University

Program: