A Cross-Sectional Online Survey of Depression Symptoms Among New Zealand’s Asian Community in the First 10 Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic
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Informa UK Limited
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated levels of distress and resulted in anti-Asian discrimination in many countries. We aimed to determine the 10-month prevalence of depression symptoms in Asian adults in New Zealand during the pandemic and to see if this was related to experience of racism. An online survey was conducted and a stratified sample of 402 respondents completed the brief Centre for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale. Analyses included: descriptive statistics, depression scores by age/gender, factor analysis of the 10 item CES-D and partial correlation network analysis of CES-D items together with questions about experience of racism. Results show that half of the sample reported clinically significant symptoms of depression. Depression was higher among younger participants but there was no gender difference. Internal consistency was high (α = 0.85) for the CES-D which revealed a clear two-factor structure. Network analysis suggested that sleeping problems might be the bridge between experiences of racism and depression. The prevalence of low mood was high with clinically significant levels of depressive symptoms. Depression was higher in younger people and had a modest positive correlation with personal experience of racism.Description
Keywords
Asian, CES-D, COVID-19, Depression, factor analysis, network analysis, racism, 4203 Health Services and Systems, 42 Health Sciences, 52 Psychology, Behavioral and Social Science, Depression, Infectious Diseases, Mental Health, Coronaviruses, Brain Disorders, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Clinical Research, Mental Illness, Mental health, General Science & Technology
Source
Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, ISSN: 0303-6758 (Print); 1175-8899 (Online), Informa UK Limited, 55(1), 98-112. doi: 10.1080/03036758.2023.2251900
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© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.