The effects of familial acculturative stress and hopelessness on suicidal ideation by immigration status among college students

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Based on acculturative family distancing theory, we examined whether familial acculturative stress interacted with hopelessness to predict suicidal ideation differentially among emerging adult immigrant versus nonimmigrant college students. Participants: We recruited 152 generationally and racially/ethnically diverse college students (42 immigrants) from 2012 to 2013. Methods: Participants completed measures of hopelessness, depressive symptoms, ethnic identity, familial acculturative stress, and suicidal ideation. Results: Immigrant status interacted with hopelessness and familial acculturative stress. Hopelessness was associated with less suicidal ideation among immigrants than among nonimmigrants at a familial acculturative stress score below the 11th percentile, but greater suicidal ideation among immigrants than among nonimmigrants at a familial acculturative stress score above the 72nd percentile. Conclusions: Familial acculturative stress may exacerbate the effect of hopelessness on suicidal ideation among immigrant college students, and should be monitored during suicide risk assessment and treatment.

KEYWORDS:

• Acculturative family distancing
• acculturative stress
• hopelessness
• immigrant
• suicidal ideation

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of the City University of New York.

Funding

This study was funded by NIH grant 5SC1 MH091873 to Regina Miranda, a Psi Chi undergraduate research grant to Robert Lane, and a Hunter College Undergraduate Research Initiative grant to Robert Lane. Thanks to Alyssa Wheeler, Xiao Fang, Valerie Khait, Kaerensa Craft, Eileen Fener, Nargus Harounzadeh, Justyna Jurska, Amy Kephart, Giulia Landi, Jessica Silver, Lauren Uss, and Jorge Valderrama for their assistance with data collection. Robert Lane is now a doctoral student at St. John's University. Portions of this paper were presented at the Association for Psychological Science, 27th annual convention (2015).