LFB Scholarly

"a notable contribution to immigration studies." -- Contemporary Sociology

Description

Odera’s work yields rich data on Kenyan immigrants and reveals a highly educated group of foreign-born individuals. She adapts a multidimensional conceptual framework that combines both the stress-and-coping model of acculturation proposed by Berry (1980) and the sociocultural model proposed by Ward and Rana-Deuba (1999); both of which govern the relationship between acculturation and mental health. Findings indicate that Kenyan immigrants’ acculturation is determined by their gender, age, immigration status, duration of stay in the United States as well as their ties to Kenya. Acculturative stress is one of the main predictors of depressive symptoms and subjective health evaluation. Social support and religious coping styles are salient to Kenyan immigrants as they navigate American society.

About the Author

Lilian Odera is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and Researcher at the Counseling and Psychological Services Center and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. She earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and was a Post-doctoral fellow at Florida International University.