Shared Cultural Values Influence Mental Health Help-Seeking Behaviors in Asian and Latinx College Students.

The current study sought to understand the influence of cultural values on mental health attitudes and help-seeking behaviors in college students of diverse ethnic backgrounds. Asian and Latinx college students (N = 159) completed an online survey in which they reported on their adherence to cultural values as measured by ethnicity-specific cultural values and general attitudes towards mental health. Factor analysis revealed two common factors of cultural values irrespective of ethnicity: Interdependent Orientation (IO) and Cultural Obligation (CO). Regardless of ethnicity, the more students endorsed IO values, the less likely they were to perceive a need for mental health treatment. IO value adherence was also predictive of more negative attitudes towards mental health. CO values were not predictive of perceived need or help-seeking behaviors. Findings highlight the importance of understanding shared cultural values across ethnic-racial groups and considering how the multidimensionality of culture may help explain shared mental health behaviors crossing lines of ethnic group membership.

Early-childhood social reticence predicts SCR-BOLD coupling during fear extinction recall in preadolescent youth.

Social Reticence (SR) is a temperament construct identified in early childhood that is expressed as shy, anxiously avoidant behavior and, particularly when stable, robustly associated with risk for anxiety disorders. Threat circuit function may develop differently for children high on SR than low on SR. We compared brain function and behavior during extinction recall in a sample of 11-to-15-year-old children characterized in early childhood on a continuum of SR. Three weeks after undergoing fear conditioning and extinction, participants completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging extinction recall task assessing memory and threat differentiation for conditioned stimuli. Whereas self-report and psychophysiological measures of differential conditioning, extinction, and extinction recall were largely similar across participants, SR-related differences in brain function emerged during extinction recall. Specifically, childhood SR was associated with a distinct pattern of hemodynamic-autonomic covariation in the brain when recalling extinguished threat and safety cues. SR and attention focus impacted associations between trial-by-trial variation in autonomic responding and in brain activation. These interactions occurred in three main brain areas: the anterior insular cortex (AIC), the anterior subdivision of the medial cingulate cortex (aMCC), and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This pattern of SCR-BOLD coupling may reflect selective difficulty tracking safety in a temperamentally at-risk population.