title: Cultural stressors and the hopelessness model of depressive symptoms in Latino adolescents.
abstract: Depressive symptoms in Latino youth have been related to both culturally-universal and culturally-based stressors. However, few studies have examined the unique contributions of culturally-based stressors above and beyond other types of stressors. Moreover, no past studies with Latinos have examined the role of culturally-based stressors within a hopelessness model of depressive symptoms, a cognitive model with the strongest empirical support in adolescence. The current study examined these issues in a sample of 171 Latino adolescents (7th-10th grades; mean age = 14; 46 % male). The Latino adolescents were primarily Mexican-American (78 %) and born in the United States (60 %). Students completed measures during a school period on their experiences of parent-child conflict, economic stress, discrimination from peers, and acculturative stress as well as depressive symptoms and attributional style. The results indicated that culturally-based stressors (e.g., acculturative stress and discrimination) predicted greater depressive symptoms even when controlling for culturally-universal stressors (e.g., parent-child conflict, economic stress). Moreover, a negative attributional style moderated the relationship between culturally-universal stressors and depressive symptoms, but this was not the case for culturally-based stressors. Culturally-based stressors play an important role in depressive symptoms among Latino youth. These stressors predicted greater symptomatology even when controlling for other types of stressors and a negative attributional style. These findings suggest that there may be other cognitive risk factors associated with culturally-based stressors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402-6170, USA. glstein@uncg.edu
authors.forename: Gabriela L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Stein
authors.forename: Laura M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Gonzalez
authors.forename: Nadia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Huq
mesh_terms: D000069:Acculturation; D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000208:ethnology*; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology*; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D003863:Depression / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008019:Life Style; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012307:Risk Factors; D014481:United States