Symptoms of depression in elderly Korean immigrants: narration and the healing process

Abstract

This paper explores ways in which depressive symptoms are expressed by elderly Korean immigrants in the USA. Depressed elderly Korean immigrants in the Washington DC area were interviewed in depth to explore their conceptualizations of depression in terms of explanatory models and semantic networks. The expressions of depressive symptoms were influenced by linguistic and psycho-socio-cultural factors, therapeutic behaviors, and efficacy of treatment. The data were interpreted in terms of traditional Korean medical principles, cosmological, socio-cultural, and religious influences, and an individual's family structural changes and acculturation. Findings indicate the construction of somatization among Korean elders is more complex than is generally reported: in most cases, a dynamic, holistic blend of processes appears to operate simultaneously, instead of as somatization in isolation. Informants placed different degrees of emphasis on psychologization or somatization, or the two combined. The roles of personality, value orientation, intellect, emotion, economic status, degree of acculturation, degree of dependence on children, living situation (with or not with children), and self-will or self-confidence are important influences on the depression symptoms in the psychologization-somatization continuum. The more self-directed the informants are, the more they psychologize; the more other-directed, the more they seem to somatize. Names and symptoms of depression (a Western concept) and popular illnesses (traditional Korean concepts) were used interchangeably by the informants. When informants were asked to explain the signs and symptoms of depression and sadness, some described symptoms similar to the criteria of major depression in DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association), while others gave different symptoms and ways of expressing them. Some informants believed that symptoms and signs of depression can be concealed from others if one chooses to do so. Many felt that manifestations of depression can be controlled by willpower, personality, and self-care.