Social Networks, Social Support, and their Relationship to Depression among Immigrant Mexican Women

This empirical study uses data derived from a community survey of women of Mexican descent in San Diego County in order to identify characteristics of immigrant social networks, and determine how these characteristics are related to emotional support and personal distress. Correlational and chi-square analyses were used to manipulate aggregate data. Major findings are that social networks, including both friends and family, are available from the early stages of immigration. Interaction patterns indicate that friendship contacts are stable over time, and that family contacts increase with time. The most important source of emotional support is among relatives of the family of origin. In contrast, adult children living in independent households, despite high contact levels with mothers, were not found to be a source of emotional support. Higher levels of contact with friends are related to increased emotional support from those friends, but friend contact is not as salient as family contact for emotional support. A final analysis indicates that when all social network variables, as well as several social and demographic variables, are intercorrelated, family emotional support and income are the two best predictors of depression in this sample of Mexican immigrant women. Conversely, social network contact per se is not related to depression, suggesting that emotional support is dependent on the type of role providers within immigrant interaction networks, rather than on merely presence or absence of such a network.