Sexual orientation and gender identity/expression change efforts (SOGIECEs) are discredited practices that are associated with serious negative effects and incompatible with modern standards for clinical practice. Despite evidence linking SOGIECEs with serious iatrogenic effects, and despite support for LGBTQ+-affirmative care alternatives, SOGIECE practices persist. In the 1970s and 1980s, Behavior Therapy published articles testing and/or endorsing SOGIECEs, thereby contributing to their overall development, acceptance, and use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCultur Divers Ethnic Minor Psychol
October 2024
Objectives: Latinx immigrant youth are at greater risk for mental health (MH) concerns than their nonimmigrant Latinx peers. Efforts to address mental health disparities have resulted in the much-needed development of theoretical frameworks explaining mental health disparities in marginalized populations. A theoretical framework that is particularly relevant to mental health disparities among Latinx immigrant youth is the Cultural Stress Theory (CST); however, an expansion of this model is necessary to thoroughly describe and explain mental health risk in this population.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhether Latinx families use youth mental health services (MHS) depends on complex influences of barriers and facilitators within and outside of the home. This research sought to shed light on caregiver strain as part of the equation focused on parental identification and responses to youth mental health needs. We examined multiple dimensions of caregiver strain as potential mediators between youth mental health symptom severity and psychological counseling utilization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCaregiver strain or stress directly related to caring for a youth with emotional and/or behavioral problems may be an important and understudied cultural factor associated with mental health disparities among Latinx families. Caregiver strain is a highly relevant construct for research questions focused on the identification of youth's mental health needs, family-level impacts of youth mental health problems, and utilization of youth mental health services. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of research on measures of caregiver strain and the psychometric properties of existing measures in Latinx samples.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdverse life events are associated with greater internalizing symptoms. However, prior research has identified cross-cultural variation in whether and to what extent factors amplify or buffer the impact of these stressors. Broadly defined as the tendency to focus on past, present, or future events, temporal orientation is a dispositional factor that is culturally influenced and may explain variance in internalizing symptoms following adverse events.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study aimed to identify profiles of youth presenting with a unique combination of environmental characteristics and understand the differential relationship between profile membership, anxiety, and depression symptoms. Data were drawn from 158 Latino youth between the ages of 11 and 13. Youth provided information on community violence exposure, acculturative stress, familial and peer support, and parental supervision.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLatinx families face unique barriers to accessing traditional youth mental health services and may instead rely on a wide range of supports to meet youth emotional or behavioral concerns. Previous studies have typically focused on patterns of utilization for discrete services, classified by setting, specialization, or level of care (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFYouth from historically marginalized racial and/or ethnic backgrounds often face discrimination, oppression, prejudice, racism, and segregation (DOPRS). These experiences, in turn, impact well-being and psychological functioning. Though the field of clinical child psychology is on the path to address DOPRS in clinical practice, there is sparce guidance for clinicians.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Clin Child Adolesc Psychol
May 2022
Black and Latinx youth are more likely to be placed into foster care compared to non-Latinx white youth. Foster care placement can facilitate mental health service use, yet youth from marginalized and oppressed racial and ethnic groups in foster care are still less likely to receive mental health services compared to non-Latinx white youth. This study aims to examine this discrepancy Black and Latinx youth face by testing (a) whether mental health need moderates the relationship between race or ethnicity and foster care placement and (b) whether race or ethnicity moderates the relationship between foster care placement and mental health service use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch highlights distinct temperamental, cultural, and behavioral characteristics that may contribute to the differential experience and impact of acculturative stress in Latinx youth. The current study aims to explain the risk of developing anxiety and depression by clarifying how acculturative stress interacts with individual temperamental (behavioral inhibition), cultural (values), and behavioral (active coping) characteristics in a sample of 161 Latinx youth. Main analyses included a separate hierarchical linear regression for each potential moderating variable with anxiety and depression as the outcome variable.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Community-engaged research (CEnR) is an approach to inquiry that centers scientist-community partnerships characterized by mutuality and reciprocity, and is well-aligned with trauma-informed principles, such as trustworthiness, transparency, and fostering empowerment.
Method: The current paper considers definitions and applications of CEnR, highlighting examples from the trauma literature, from the formulation of research questions to the dissemination of research findings.
Conclusion: To realize CEnR's promise to contribute to innovation, scientific understanding, and increased impact in the trauma field will require a shift in training and institutions.
Latinx youth are less likely to receive mental health services (MHS) than their non-Hispanic White counterparts. Disparities in MHS use have also been shown to vary by type of mental health problem and indices of caregiver culture even within Latinx samples, suggesting the need to go beyond cross-group racial/ethnic comparisons. However, much of the current research examining these within-group disparities has failed to directly measure the extent to which these differences are associated to specific culture.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite increased recognition of disparities in youth mental health, racial/ethnic disparities in mental health burden and in mental health service use persist. This phenomenon suggests that research documenting disparities alone has not led to extensive action in practice settings in order to significantly reduce disparities. In this commentary, we present a framework to actively target this research-to-practice gap by describing the development of a resource titled, "Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Racial and Ethnic Minority Youth-A Guide for Practitioners.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNot all youth exposed to violence are at equal risk for developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), reflecting potential variability in risk factors influencing the development of PTSD beyond exposure to violence. In particular, Latino youth have been found to be at a higher risk for developing PTSD after exposure to violence. Similarly, youth with high levels of behavioral inhibition appear to be at greater risk of developing PTSD following exposure to violence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite high rates of exposure to community violence among Latino youth in urban communities, there is considerable variability in individual outcomes. This study examined (a) associations between coping and indices of Latino culture, (b) main effects of active/avoidant coping on psychopathology, and (c) whether coping moderates the impact of violence exposure on mental health in Latino youth. Participants included 168 Latino youth (56% female; ages 11-14) that took part in a short-term longitudinal study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLimited research has examined the relation between exposure to stressors and internalizing symptoms among Latino adolescents, including factors that account for this relation. This study examined whether sleep played a role in the relation between exposure to neighborhood- (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvid Based Pract Child Adolesc Ment Health
August 2016
We examined the identification of trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in help-seeking urban children (=157) presenting for care in community mental health clinics. Children and their parents completed a standard intake assessment conducted by a community clinician followed by a structured trauma-focused assessment conducted by a study clinician. Clinicians provided ratings of child functional impairment, parents reported on internalizing/externalizing problems, and children provided self-reports of PTSD symptom severity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTeacher-Child Interaction Training (TCIT), adapted from Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), is a classroom-based program designed to provide teachers with behavior management skills that foster positive teacher-student relationships and to improve student behavior by creating a more constructive classroom environment. The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate TCIT in more classrooms than previously reported in the literature, with older children than previously reported, using random assignment of classrooms to TCIT or to a no-TCIT control condition and conducting all but two sessions within the classroom to enhance feasibility. Participants included 11 kindergarten and first grade classroom teachers and their 118 students from three urban, public schools in Manhattan, with five classrooms randomly assigned to receive TCIT and six to the no-TCIT control condition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study examined proximal risk and protective factors that contribute to academic achievement among 130 Latino students. Participating students were 56.2% female and 35.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite high rates of trauma exposure (46%-96%) and significant posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; 21%-29%) symptoms in adolescent psychiatric inpatients, there is a dearth of research on effective interventions delivered in inpatient settings. The current report describes the development of Brief STAIR-A, a repeatable 3-module version of skills training in affective and interpersonal regulation (STAIR) developed for adolescents in inpatient care. An uncontrolled design was used to conduct a preliminary examination of the group intervention's effectiveness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Trauma Stress
February 2014
The Child PTSD Symptom Scale (Foa, Johnson, Feeny, & Treadwell, ) is a self-report measure of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTSD) in children and adolescents. Despite widespread use of this measure, no study to our knowledge has examined its psychometric properties in Latino children. This study examined the factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent validity of the measure utilizing a sample of 161 Latino students (M = 11.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Maternal posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be associated with increased risk for child maltreatment and child exposure to traumatic events. Exposure to multiple traumatic events is associated with a wide range of adverse health and social outcomes in children.
Objective: To examine the association of probable maternal depression, PTSD, and comorbid PTSD and depression with the risk for child maltreatment and parenting stress and with the number of traumatic events to which preschool children are exposed.
The authors examined racial/ethnic differences in pathways from maltreatment exposure to specialty mental health service use for youth in contact with the Child Welfare system. Participants included 1,600 non-Hispanic White, African American, and Latino youth (age 4-14) who were the subjects of investigations for alleged maltreatment and participated in the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. Maltreatment exposure, internalizing, and externalizing problems were assessed at baseline and subsequent specialty mental health service use was assessed 1 year later.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Abnorm Child Psychol
August 2013
Latino children in urban contexts marked by poverty are at high risk of being exposed to violence and developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Nonetheless, there is great variability in individual responses to violence exposure. This study examines risk for developing re-experiencing, avoidance, and arousal symptoms of PTSD as a function of individual differences in behavioral inhibition and exposure to community violence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: This study examined racial disparities in mental health service use by problem type (internalizing versus externalizing) for youths in contact with the child welfare system.
Methods: Participants included 1,693 non-Hispanic white, African-American, and Hispanic youths (ages four to 14) from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, a national probability study of youths who were the subject of investigations of maltreatment by child welfare agencies. Mental health need, assessed at baseline, was considered present if the youth had internalizing or externalizing scores in the clinical range on either the Child Behavior Checklist or the Youth Self-Report.