Original articleTrajectories of Cultural Stressors and Effects on Mental Health and Substance Use Among Hispanic Immigrant Adolescents
Section snippets
Cultural stressors and their effects on health outcomes
Cultural stressors that operate in the lives of Hispanic adolescents, and that are linked with negative mental health and risk-taking outcomes, include perceptions of discrimination [12], a negative context of reception (NCR) [13], [14], and bicultural stress [15]. Perceived discrimination refers to negative interactions with others based on social group membership, such as being called derogatory names and being viewed with suspicion [16]. Context of reception refers to the opportunity
Participants
Participants were 302 recently immigrated adolescents from highly Hispanic areas of Miami-Dade and Los Angeles Counties. Participants were recruited primarily from the English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classes. Adolescents were completing or entering the ninth grade at the time of the baseline assessment. The study was approved by the institutional review boards at the University of Miami, the University of Southern California, and each of the participating school districts.
The
Results
Analyses for the present study were conducted in four primary steps as follows: (1) defining a latent cultural stress variable at baseline; (2) examining invariance of this factor over time to ensure that we could include the factor in latent growth curve analyses; (3) estimating a latent growth curve for the cultural stress factor; and (4) examining effects of the cultural stress trajectory on outcome variables at Time 6, controlling for baseline levels.
Discussion
In this study, we evaluated the latent structure among three prominent cultural stressors, and examined how the longitudinal trajectory of this cultural stress composite predicted developmental changes in positive youth development, depressive symptoms, externalizing behavior, and substance use among Hispanic immigrant adolescents. Given the present political climate in the United States regarding Hispanic immigration, cultural stressors and their effects on developmental and health outcomes
Acknowledgments
We thank Maria-Rosa Velazquez, Tatiana Clavijo, Mercedes Prado, Alba Alfonso, Aleyda Marcos, Daisy Ramirez, Lissette Ramirez, and Perlita Carrillo for their hard work conducting assessments and tracking families; Dr. Judy Arroyo for her guidance and wisdom; and the study families for sharing their experiences with us.
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Conflicts of Interest: Preparation of this article was supported by grants DA026594 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and AA021888 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to S.J.S., and by National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, grant 1UL1TR000460 to J.S.