UC fosters student-led research on Latinx mental health

As a future bilingual clinical psychologist, University of Cincinnati doctoral student Julia Rabin, who speaks Spanish as a second language, says she is passionate about advocating for improving Latinx mental health outcomes in the U.S.

To that end, Rabin recently saw her research (conducted while a graduate student at UC) on the impact of federal policies on Latinx mental health published as the lead author.   

The study — “Anti-immigration policies of the Trump administration: A review of Latinx mental health and resilience in the face of structural violence” — is an analysis of Latinx mental health outcomes during the Trump presidency and was published in the journal Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy. 

“Through this project, I wanted to explore the intersection of policy and mental health to uncover   potential implications for Latinx well-being and to argue for the importance of research that informs policy change,” says Rabin who is being mentored by Farrah Jacquez, a UC professor of clinical psychology.       

“Student-led research is not only crucial to developing the future of innovation and science, but students bring energy and perspective to long-standing problems that increases the potential for solutions,” says Jacquez.

Rabin’s research, she says, shows that anti-immigrant rhetoric and enforcement damages the well-being of Latinx individuals; therefore, immigration reform is not only a social justice issue but crucial for mental health equity.

What Rabin found, from the review of 21 articles on Latinx mental health outcomes during the political climate of the Trump presidency, was that negative emotional experiences were commonplace for Latinx adults and children. Events such as separation of families at the border, deportation of family members and political turmoil around the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) were associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety and behavioral difficulties in the Latinx community.

According to the study, during the Trump presidency, fearing deportation, worrying about status as an individual with DACA living in the U.S. and knowing someone who was deported were experiences that increased the risk of worse mental health outcomes for Latinx individuals, regardless of their documentation status; looking across these risk factors, each was a product of heightened immigration enforcement.

Overall, Rabin says, it can be argued that immigration enforcement serves as a unique stressor for the Latinx community that has harmful implications for their psychological well-being, whether they have citizenship status in this country or not.

However, she says, the study also found that various forms of coping also help Latinx communities overcome these challenges. These included ways of thinking and processing challenges at the level of individual characteristics, such as “luchando adelante” (literally, fighting forward, or the motivation to keep living and fighting for each day), and larger sociocultural factors, such as civic engagement as a driving force for social connection, hope and community empowerment in support of Latinx rights.

In addition to Jacquez, co-authors from the UC Department of Psychology included Cathleen Stough, associate professor, and Anjali Dutt, assistant professor.

The research, all say, highlights the value of continued work in the intersection of policy and mental health to continue uncovering how systemic inequities and structural violence at the national level impact mental well-being for the Latinx community, one of the fastest growing ethnic minority communities in the U.S.

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