Self-care strategy of elderly Korean immigrants in the Washington DC Metropolitan Area.

The elderly Korean immigrants in the Greater Washington, DC Metropolitan Area use emotional self-care practices to counteract sad and depressive experiences. They tend not to use professional medical help and/or prescription medicine. Their choice of a self-care mental health strategy is a function of several sociocultural and historical factors: the Korean concept of self, life-long caring role, concepts of a morally exemplary emotional life, religious and cosmological beliefs, beliefs about depression and mental illness, systematic and holistic medical principles, political and social upheavals in Korea. Additional factors include the challenge of transition and immigration to a new culture and country, the USA, with its lack of available resources for the immigrants, such as time with their adult children, lower socioeconomic status, language facility, and transportation. Specific self-prescribed self-care strategies for depression include cognitive strategies, religious strategies, physical strategies, social strategies, and artistic strategies.