The Latino immigrant population in the United States has grown rapidly, now standing at over 56 million people. Due to this increase in Latino immigrants, investigation of their mental and physical health is crucial. Few studies have investigated conjointly both physical and mental health in Latino immigrant adults. Daily discrimination and acculturative stress have been found to affect the mental and physical health of Latino immigrants. Cultural strengths including social support, religiosity, and enculturation have been linked to Latino immigrant health. In the minority stress model, cultural strengths have been theorized to moderate relationships between discrimination and health. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among acculturative stress, discrimination, and mental and physical health. A secondary aim was to examine whether direct and indirect effects among these series of variables are moderated by social support, religiosity, and enculturation. A community sample of 204 Latino immigrants were recruited. Generally, bivariate associations between variables were congruent with previous research. Anxiety was found to mediated the effects of both acculturative stress and discrimination on physical health. Depression was found to mediate the effect of discrimination on physical health. Social support was found to moderate indirect effect of discrimination on physical health through depression. Enculturation moderated the indirect effects of both acculturative stress and discrimination on physical health through anxiety. Results from this study indicate that minority stressors can impact physical health through mental health, and these relationships can be buffered by links to cultural strengths including social support and enculturation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:vcu.edu/oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-6456 |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| Creators | Cariello, Annahir N |
| Publisher | VCU Scholars Compass |
| Source Sets | Virginia Commonwealth University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | © The Author |
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