Adaptation and Depression
Any time that a group enters a foreign habitat it must adapt to be able to thrive in its new environment. When a bird flies to a new home it must learn what it can and cannot eat in that area. The bird must learn what predators it has to avoid and what the climate is in its new environment. When a person moves from one neighborhood to another they have to adjust to the new people. The children must learn the slang that is spoken at the local school. The parents must learn what type of traffic laws are enforced. They must learn what restaurants are good and which are to be avoided. It is so difficult to move from one neighborhood to another, and it is so much harder to transplant oneself from one culture to an entirely new one where everything is new. Dominicans who come to America must cope with learning a new language and a new lifestyle. They are moving from the country in which they were so comfortable to a new one where they are unwelcome and often unhappy. Dominicans in the United States are facing problems, which ultimately lead them to be depressed people. This depression cycles in with their other problems to eventually give them a low quality of living, in a nation which has one of the highest qualities of living of any place in the world.
For a new Dominican immigrant the united states must seem like a scary place, where there are seemingly insurmountable obstacles that need to be quickly dealt with. The first thing that must strike a Dominican who comes to the United States is that they do not speak the language. This problem seems like an obvious one, but it is so simple to take for granted that the people who hear you will understand the words, which are spoken. To come to a new coun...
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...o less true for the Dominican population then it is for the general population. It also stands to reason that the Dominican population suffers from a higher rate of depression then the general population does, because of their higher rate of unemployment, and other similar maladys. Another factor leading to depression, especially for women, within the Dominican community, is lack of perceived social support. Many Dominicans believe that they don't have enough support in their new country. They may feel isolated, or they may simply be homesick, but they feel as though they lack a social structure which supports them, and makes them feel comfortable.
Depression is an affliction which can cripple a person severely. A depressed person is generally less motivated, less happy and, because of their depression they have less bright prospects then a non depressed person.
Culture is our way of experiencing our daily lives. Dominican Republic’s culture is very complementary to mine, we respect our family dearly. Although it is peculiar for the housewife to be the bread winner of the family, the father is usually the one that will provide for the family. A Large family is infrequent nowadays, most families could have up to six children. A big family also plays a big role in financial problem. Junnot and his family leaves in a very poor neighborhood since it was just his mother that is basically feeding everyone in the house. The amount of income parents makes will determine the type of neighborhood they might live in, or the type of school the children might go to. “It is not as if the robbery came as a huge surprise. In our neighborhood, cars and apartment were always getting jacked.”(385) Majority of the immigrant lives in a poor neighborhood full of delinquency and crime due to poverty. Poverty level is based on the family circumstances. There is a higher chance of poverty with the newly immigrant, and they live in this condition because they are still new to the county. Education also plays a big role in this, because the more educated a person is the more they are likely to make it and become successful quicker. This might be a little different with the children, and there is a high
Immigrants come to America, the revered City upon a Hill, with wide eyes and high hopes, eager to have their every dream and wild reverie fulfilled. Rarely, if ever, is this actually the case. A select few do achieve the stereotypical ‘rags to riches’ transformation – thus perpetuating the myth. The Garcia family from Julia Alvarez’s book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, fall prey to this fairytale. They start off the tale well enough: the girls are treated like royalty, princesses of their Island home, but remained locked in their tower, also known as the walls of their family compound. The family is forced to flee their Dominican Republic paradise – which they affectionately refer to as simply, the Island – trading it instead for the cold, mean streets of American suburbs. After a brief acclimation period, during which the girls realize how much freedom is now available to them, they enthusiastically try to shed their Island roots and become true “American girls.” They throw themselves into the American lifestyle, but there is one slight snag in their plan: they, as a group, are unable to forget their Island heritage and upbringing, despite how hard they try to do so. The story of the Garcia girls is not a fairytale – not of the Disney variety anyway; it is the story of immigrants who do not make the miraculous transition from rags to riches, but from stifling social conventions to unabridged freedom too quickly, leaving them with nothing but confusion and unresolved questions of identity.
Inoa, Orlando, and Sagas, Ernesto. The Dominican People: A Documentary History. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2003.
It was quite fitting that the main base for the location setting of this story was in New Jersey, which is a quintessential destination for Dominican immigration. Many of the topics of Dominican society that were discussed in this
When Puerto Ricans migrated to the United States they did it in two major waves. The first wave of emigration occurred in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The second wave occurred from the 1940s to the present. The workings of Bernando Vega and Jose Cruz deal with the different generations of Puerto Ricans that these two waves brought to the United States. While Vega discusses the early emigration of Puerto Ricans to New York City, Cruz discusses the later emigration of Puerto Ricans to Connecticut. Each author describes a different Puerto Rican experience in the United States. The experiences differed in most aspects; from the context in which each wave of emigration occurred to the type of politics that was practiced.
"Dominicans (Dominican Republic)." Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life. Ed. Timothy L. Gall and Jeneen Hobby. 2nd ed. Vol. 2: Americas. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 195-199. Student Resources in Context. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
An important factor in facilitating Dominican migration to United States has been the 1965 Family Reunification Act, which has allowed many Dominicans to enter the United States through strong family networks, making these distinct elements of the Dominican male immigration context from the beginning. Interestingly, the Dominican community is considered a transnational community, where member maintain strong ties to the Dominican Republic and the United States, Rodriguez
There are many challenges that one must face as we go through life. I have faced a few myself, however, none proved more challenging than moving from my country; Jamaica, to the United States and subsequently moving to the state of Wisconsin. Deciding to leave behind family and friends is the hardest decision to make, however, there are a few things that I was not prepared for that made the transition more challenging than expected. Moving away from all that is familiar culturally, socially and economically can be even more of a daunting task than imagined. There are things that are taught to us by our parents and others that are more dictated by our environment than anything else, so when I immigrated to the United States I had three major challenges to overcome.
When it comes to immigration many things comes to a person mind. There are many things that an immigrant faces when he/she decides to migrate to another country. For instance, for an immigrant moving is not an easy thing to do they will have to leave everything behind and start over again in a whole different country than their own native country. At first is going to be hard because they do not know anyone, they do not speak the language. The parents will have to look for a house and also look for a job to support their family and learn how to survive in what seems like a different world. These are some of the problems that immigrants face when coming to the United States.
The author, Nancy Lopez, having started at the beginning with a particular goal in mind, which was dedicated to researching why women are much more successful in terms of education, however, decided to go a different route that explored and discussed the multiple ways in which second-generation Dominican men are highly racialized and gendered which has detrimental effects on their lives, both short term and long term. Under these circumstances, Lopez’s main argument consists with the various facts that second-generation Dominican men are being unfairly treated within the school context. For example, school security, the infrastructure conditions of the school, as well as the teachers have a stigmatizing effect on how Dominican men, specifically
“Women are two times more likely to develop depressive symptoms then men”(Psychosocial and Behavioral Factors in Women’s Health, 1990), and women who are among the child-bearing years tend to be more at risk. However this is not to say that men are not affected by depression. It is usually, because of negative social influences, such as economic instability, and/or the inability to handle stress in their lives.
No matter what background we come from, we all have some type of language barrier. The immigrants in America, forming and identity means more than just learning English and acclimatizing into the society. People who are born in a foreign country and immigrate to the United States of America (first generation immigrants) have difficulties adapting to the American culture and learning the language. Second generation immigrants usually have no difficulty in adapting but tend to have difficulties in learning to function between the two cultures (American culture and their native culture). A Chicana who grew up in South Texas to a Mexican immigrant mother faces a similar type of problem. In the essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldúa. The author expresses her feelings about the social and cultural differences Mexican immigrants face when being raised in the United States of America. Anzaldúa also brings to debate about the important social problems such as sexism, racism, and identity construction.
As Descartes argued, the mind and the body are the base of our existence, and many different cultures view different illnesses positively or negatively. Certain cultures, like the Hmong, believe that epilepsy is a good spiritual thing, but others, such as Western culture, believe that it is medically bad because it could cause death. Many illnesses can be viewed both negatively and positively, some more than others. However, one such illness that is mostly viewed negatively is depression. It is viewed negatively in a symptomatic sense – the symptoms are useless – and in a diagnostic sense – those diagnosed with depression are not actually depressed and the illness itself does not exist; it is simply an excuse to be lazy. There are many different approaches to depression and most of them consider that this illness is negative; however, depression is actually an evolutionary tactic subconsciously employed by humans that can have very positive effects.
There are many people in the world who are struggling with the disease depression. Depression is the state in which a person feels very sad, hopeless and unimportant. The thing about depression is that it affects both genders and any ages. Depression is something that deserves full attention. For many reasons doctors believe that when a person has depression, they have to start taking medication for it as if medications help. People are becoming more dependent on antidepressants when there are other techniques for dealing with depression.
According to Psychology Information Online, depression is a psychological condition that changes how a person thinks and feels, and it also affects their social behavior and sense of physical well being. Depression has been called a "whole body" illness because of the many things the illness affects.