Mothers of Vietnamese Amerasians: Psychological Distress and High-Risk Factors

PURPOSE: The goal of the present article is to provide information useful to clinical caseworkers and mental health professionals on the nature and correlates of psychological distress as well as high­risk factors related to the adaptation of mothers of Vietnamese Amerasians (MVAs) in the United States. METHODOLOGY: By using a series of psychological distress instruments, the psychological distress levels of MVAs were compared to that of Amerasian adolescents. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The data enabled us to identify possible high­risk factors related to the adaptation and adjustment of MVAs in the United States. The MVAs as a group were experienceing about equal levels of distress as the Amerasian adolescents. However, differences began to emerge when we used the clinical cutoff method and found that there were differences between the two groups in two of the measures. The MVAs had a significantly higher proportion who were in the clinical range as compared to the Amerasian adolescent group. The conditions that were found to put the MVAs at higher risk for psychological distress include: Feeling distant from Amerasian child, feeling close to Vietnamese child, having no relatives in the United States, higher number of years of schooling, lower income, higher number of times with serious illness, missing work due to serious illness, higher number of months at the resettlement camp, greater amount of knowledge about American husband, not being officially married to American husband, and lack of support from American husband. CONCLUSIONS: The psychological instruments used in this study were not refined enough to be used for diagnosis of specific psychological disorders. Differences between Amerasian adolescents and MVAs pointed out the importance of examining both the groups' level of distress and the propotions in each grouop who were experiencing clinical levels of distress. The high risk factors identified in the current study may be used to examine potential sources of psychological distress for MVAs. RELEVANCE TO ASIAN AMERICAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER POPULATIONS: This article is particularly relevant to Vietnamese and Amerasian. KEY WORDS: Psychological distress, high risk factors, MVAs, Ameriasian adolescents.