Asian Canadians: Experiencing and Coping with Traumatic Life Events Brianna Cheyne Luke Redden Alicia Silliker Jennifer Tracy

Traumatic Life Events The way in which individuals process traumatic life events can influence favourable or unfavourable mental and physical outcomes.

Previous Research  Previous research has focused primarily on Western populations and has not attended to the cultural backgrounds of individual participants  Foundational Research for our Study: Lyubomirsky, Sousa, and Dickerhoof (2006)  Benefits of Writing:  Hunt, Schloss, Moonat, and Poulos (2007)  King and Miner (2000)

 A Cultural Perspective:  Knowles, Wearing, and Campos (2011)  Comparison of Asian-Americans and European-Americans on a three-day writing exercise about a traumatic event  Whereas European Americans showed a decrease in illness symptoms, Asian Americans did not  Suggested reasons for this finding influenced the direction of the present study Previous Research (Cont’d)

 Research Question:  Will Asian-Canadians experience a significant reduction in illness symptoms following a meditative exercise?  Hypotheses:  Participants in the traumatic writing condition will not experience a significant reduction in illness symptoms.  Participants in the meditative condition will experience a significant reduction in illness symptoms. Our Study

 Participants: 75 Asian-Canadian students recruited from Introductory Psychology courses at the University of Toronto  Materials:  University of Toronto website  SMUHQ questionnaire  Traumatic life event prompt  Audio file of meditation instructions  Procedure:  Independent variable: assigned coping exercise  C1: Traumatic writing condition  C2: Meditative condition  Dependent variable: number of illness symptoms reported on SMUHQ one month after exercise Method

Results Figure 1. Illness symptoms as a function of writing and meditative exercises.

 Hypotheses supported: 1.Writing was not an effective coping strategy for Asian Canadians (Knowles et al.) 2.Meditation resulted in a significant reduction of illness symptoms.  Implications  Encourages therapists and researchers to not universally apply an individualistic way of thinking  This is particularly important in countries with high immigrant populations, like Canada and the United States Discussion: Past Research and Implications

 Identify and evaluate specific social norms of collectivist cultures  Expand on different coping techniques (ex. Social Interaction, Music Therapy, Physical Therapy)  Desensitization studies  Assess effects of non-communicative techniques (eg. Meditation) in European-Canadians  Compare recent immigrants to those who immigrated 20 years prior Future Directions

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