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Suicide among Asian college students becomes a major challenge for campus administrators and mental health professionals. The author contends that it is important to understand different and similar characteristics between Asian American and Asian international college students regarding suicide risk factors and protective factors in order to prevent them from committing suicide. The author provides a review of suicidal risk factors and protective factors and implications for campus mental health professionals and recommendations for future research. / text

<p> My main research questions explore how contradictions of unity, organizing structures, gender, sexuality, citizenship, class, and ability are addressed within Filipino leftist organizations that utilize dialectical materialist theory. I also ask: How have US-based women of color feminist and queer of color theory impacted Filipino nationalist frameworks in the US? How do they also remain at odds with one another? I interviewed 21 NYC-based activists and organizers involved in anti-imperialist Filipino organizations the summer of 2012. I also used participant observation as an active member of study groups, educational workshops, and a town forum. </p><p> My central framework explores conflict as contradiction using Mao Tse-tung's "On Contradiction" and the Haitian concepts of balans and konesans. In doing so, I examine how hard-lined leadership has impeded dialogue. I also interrogate how sexism, transphobia, masculinist organizing structures, and neoliberalism impact women, trans, queer, disabled, working class, and undocumented organizers&mdash;particularly those with overlapping identities of marginalization. "The Movement's" familial dynamic, combined with the value of <i>utang na loob,</i> creates hierarchies that cause some members to feel both silenced and guilty. I name these feelings as indicators of invisible emotional labor "for the sake of the movement" that lead many members to eventually leave their organizations. Their departures raise questions of sustainability. Lastly, I ask how the Fil-Am Left can draw strength from its familial dynamic but still address hierarchical issues that mirror societal hierarchies of oppression.</p><p> Applying work by Patricia Hill Collins, Audre Lorde, and other women of color, along with feminist grounded theory and sociological movement theory, I highlight three strategies that New York City based Filipino organizations have taken within the past ten years. I argue that organizations have recognized problems with sustainability and are creating their own interventions as theory-producers. Organizers' relationships to the National Democratic movement in the Philippines shape both the creation of interventions and how they respond to new ideas. Drawing on Arlie Hoschchild's concept of "stalled revolution," individual behaviors lag behind organizations' formal ideological shifts. Thus, they are works in progress.</p>

Leaving Silence: Queer Asian and Pacific Islander Oral History Exhibit (October 1996) is both a community project and an educational campaign, that was conceived and executed in Seattle, Washington. The 12-panel exhibit is composed of 13 narratives and 34 black-and-white photographs, and its theme is "coming out." The narrators and those who appear in the photographs identify as queer and as Asian and Pacific Islander. The project involved the collaboration of four community-based organizations: the Asian Lesbian and Bisexual Alliance, the Asian Pacific AIDS Council, the Asian Pacific Islander Homosexuality/Homophobia Education Project, and Queer & Asian. In this thesis I analyze this exhibit and demonstrate its relevance to critical pedagogy and to all those movements interested in the establishment of social justice.

<p> This study explores the issue of Japanese internment camp in the United States and Canada during World War Two. It argues that Japanese immigrants, who were totally innocent, became historical victims and experienced camp. During World War Two, the Japanese army attacked Pearl Harbor, a territory of the United States. This incident made mainstream American and Canadian society suspicious of Japanese immigrants, who had the same ethnicity and blood as the army, the "enemies." This study is an attempt to find the voice and feelings of those who had to experience trauma in camp. As subaltern figures, all they had to do was endure and accept their fate. As immigrants, who seemed not to have English fluency, they had to accept the requirements of America or Canada in order to be allowed to live. At the same time, this study seeks to analyze how Japanese-Americans and -Canadians forged their identity after overcoming the trauma of camp and the agony of assimilation. In so doing, this dissertation considers the work of four novelists who have written about these difficult issues. Chapter 1 explains how other Asians &ndash; Koreans and Chinese &ndash; were affected by the Japanese army and how mainstream society looked at Japanese immigrants. Chapters 2 and 3 explore Joy Kogawa's <i> Obasan</i> and <i>Itsuka.</i> Naomi, the protagonist, struggles to find a sense of "home-ness." Chapter 4 examines Monica Sone's <i> Nisei Daughter</i>. Kazuko, the protagonist, has to experience negative aspects of the United States. Chapter 5 explores Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's <i> Farewell to Manzanar.</i> Jeanne, the protagonist, has to go through painful experiences and racism up to the last section of the novel. Chapter 6 analyzes John Okada's <i>No-No Boy.</i> Ichiro, the protagonist, suffers self-alienation. He cannot fix his identity between his duality until he can find his "home." Chapter 7 examines the authors' intentions and asks in which direction Japanese-Americans and -Canadians can move forward in the future.</p>

<p> This qualitative study explores the lived experiences of Chinese immigrants who have successfully adjusted and resettled in the United States. Immigration and its related processes can be stressful and traumatic; migration entails challenges affecting one's sense of personal identity and psychological well-being. This study represents an attempt to obtain a deeper understanding of immigration's challenges, the psychological coping mechanisms used to meet those challenges, and the factors that contribute to successful adjustment and resettlement in the United States.</p><p> Participants were recruited through the researcher's social and professional network, using snowball sampling. Data were obtained from semi-structured interviews with 11 adult immigrants of Chinese descent who (a) immigrated to the United States more than five years prior to the study, (b) self-identified as having adjusted well, and (c) reestablished their lives in the United States and viewed it as their "home." Grounded theory-based qualitative analysis was applied to the interview transcripts to identify codes, themes, and categories describing the participants' experiences and psychological processes of immigration and resettlement. </p><p> Data analysis produced eight thematic categories. The eight thematic categories identified as helpful toward understanding the complex process that Chinese immigrants undergo during adjustment and successful reestablishment of their lives in the United States were (a) migratory loss and grief; (b) acculturative stress; (c) self-determination in reestablishing "home" in the United States and mastering related challenges; (d) learning new skills and learning about U.S. culture; (e) expanding and making use of interpersonal relationships and support systems; (f) use of emotional-focused coping; (g) maintaining positive attitudes and outlooks; and (h) feeling at "home" and well-adjusted in the United States. </p><p> A conceptual model was then developed to describe (a) causal conditions that underlie the development of Chinese immigrants' coping and adjustment strategies, (b) the phenomenon that arose from those conditions, (c) the coping and adjustment strategies employed, (d) contextual and intervening conditions that influenced strategy selection, and (e) the consequences of adopting the chosen strategies. In addition, a "Success of Immigration" scale was used to assess the level of successful adjustment. Clinical implications of the study and suggestions for future research are also discussed</p>

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<p> The diagnostic category of PTSD does not capture culture-relevant symptomatology, that is, somatization, for Cambodian refugees in the United States. Somatization may function as a buffer against chronic PTSD symptomatology in Cambodian refugees because somatization represents a culture-specific coping strategy for this population. The purpose of the present study is to assess the correlation between somatization and degree of PTSD symptoms. The study also addresses the mental health disparities in the Cambodian refugee population in order to inform the literature on access to better trauma-informed mental health services. </p><p> Participants were recruited from community mental health agencies in Oakland, CA and Long Beach, CA. Two "data-gathering" groups of Cambodian refugees (<i>N</i> = 26) were administered a demographic questionnaire, the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire-Revised (HTQ-R) and the Somatoform Dissociation Questionnaire-20 (SDQ-20) in Khmer and English. The correlational relationship between demographic variables was also analyzed in order to explore contextual factors behind the findings of the study's main research question. Recommendations for assessment and treatment of PTSD in Cambodian refugees were then discussed based on the study's findings. Health care utilization by Cambodian refugees was examined and recommendations were suggested for improvement in public policy and health care services.</p><p> The hypothesis of this study that the level of somatization was inversely related to degree of PTSD symptomatology in Cambodian refugees was not supported. The Pearson Correlational Coefficient analysis produced a statistically significant positive relationship (<i>r</i> = .34) between somatization and traumatization in Cambodian refugees as measured by scores on the SDQ-20 and the HTQ-R. The role of specific somatoform symptoms in the chronicity of PTSD symptomatology was explored. The positive correlation found between the SDQ-20 and HTQ-R supported previous research, demonstrating the relationship between somatoform dissociation and higher PTSD symptomatology in Cambodian refugees. </p>

<p> This study examines how Vietnamese Americans perform identities that acknowledge their statuses as diasporic Vietnamese to construct and maintain specifically Vietnamese American communities. I argue that music, especially public forms of musical expression within mass media and locally staged cultural performances, is a crucial way for Vietnamese Americans across the diaspora to transmit markers of cultural knowledge and identity that give them information about themselves and the "imagined community" constructed through their linked discourses.</p><p> The argument is organized around two main ideas that focus on broad cultural patterns and locally situated expressions, respectively. First, music produced by the niche Vietnamese American media industry is distributed across the diaspora and models discourses of Vietnamese identity as different companies provide different visions of what it means to be Vietnamese and perform Vietnamese-ness on stage. I analyze the music variety shows by three different companies (Thuy Nga Productions, Asia Entertainment, and Van Son Productions) to argue that Vietnamese American popular media should not be seen as representing a single monolithic version of Vietnamese-ness; rather, each articulation of Vietnamese identity is slightly different and speaks to a different formulation of the Vietnamese public, producing a discursive field for diverse Vietnamese American identity politics.</p><p> Secondly, I show how identity is always performed in particular places, illustrating that Vietnamese Americans performing music in different places can have vastly different understandings of that music and its relationship to their identities. Using a Peircian semiotic framework, I articulate a theory of place-making in which places become vehicles for the clustering of signs and meaning as people experience and interpret those places and make meaning there. As people's experiences imbue places with meaning, people coming from similar cultural backgrounds may gain different attachments to those places and one another and thus different understandings of their identities as Vietnamese. I use two contrasting examples of Vietnamese American communities in Indianapolis and San Jose to show how people in each place construct entirely different discourses of identity surrounding musical performance based upon their positionality within the diaspora.</p>

In recent years there has been a notable increase in the number of suicides amongst South Asian youth in the Region of Peel in Ontario. Using a six-page questionnaire, an exploratory descriptive study was conducted with 104 participants. The purpose of the study was to inquire into the number of South Asian youth that had ever considered committing suicide; determine whether there were any predicting factors; and gain insight as to "why." It was found that close to 30% of the sample had considered suicide and that gender, place of birth and a self-rating scale of depression were significant variables. Of those who had admitted to having considered suicide, 'family pressures' was cited as the number one reason.