Caregiver experienced racism, acculturative stress, and political hostility predict anxiety in Latinx families residing in the United States.

OBJECTIVE: Cultural stress potently predicts mental health inequities, such as anxiety, among adult and adolescent immigrants in the United States. However, less work has focused on preadolescence, a period marked by neurodevelopmental and psychosocial changes that can exacerbate anxiety symptoms. Latina girls, who exhibit heightened levels of untreated anxiety, may be at elevated risk. The present study tests whether cultural stress predicts anxiety symptoms in Latina girls and their caregivers. METHOD: The primary caregivers of 161 predominantly Mexican-identifying Latina girls (Mage = 10.70, SD = 1.68) reported their exposure to racism, acculturative stress, and political hostility. They also reported their own and their daughter's anxiety severity. RESULTS: To index cultural stress, a principal component was extracted from composite scores of the racism, acculturative stress, and political hostility questionnaires. Hierarchical regression analyses then tested whether the multidetermined cultural stress component predicted caregiver and child anxiety, with child age, annual household income, and subjective socioeconomic status entered at the first step. Cultural stress positively predicted caregiver (ΔR² = .13, p < .001) and child (ΔR² = .15, p < .001) anxiety symptoms over and above the observed inverse effects of subjective socioeconomic status, such that higher levels of cultural stress were associated with elevated levels of caregiver (ß = .37, p < .001) and child (ß = .39, p < .001) anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study highlight the role of racism, acculturative stress, and political hostility in escalating anxiety symptoms in Latinx families and identify cultural stress as a factor that likely contributes to the high rates of anxiety in Latina girls during a key developmental period. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Longitudinal Change in Adolescent Depression and Anxiety Symptoms from before to during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This study aimed to examine changes in depression and anxiety symptoms from before to during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in a sample of 1,339 adolescents (9-18 years old, 59% female) from three countries. We also examined if age, race/ethnicity, disease burden, or strictness of government restrictions moderated change in symptoms. Data from 12 longitudinal studies (10 U.S., 1 Netherlands, 1 Peru) were combined. Linear mixed effect models showed that depression, but not anxiety, symptoms increased significantly (median increase = 28%). The most negative mental health impacts were reported by multiracial adolescents and those under 'lockdown' restrictions. Policy makers need to consider these impacts by investing in ways to support adolescents' mental health during the pandemic.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion in developmental neuroscience: Practical lessons from community-based participatory research.

Exclusion of racialized minorities in neuroscience directly harms communities and potentially leads to biased prevention and intervention approaches. As magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other neuroscientific techniques offer progressive insights into the neurobiological underpinnings of mental health research agendas, it is incumbent on us as researchers to pay careful attention to issues of diversity and representation as they apply in neuroscience research. Discussions around these issues are based largely on scholarly expert opinion without actually involving the community under study. In contrast, community-engaged approaches, specifically Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), actively involve the population of interest in the research process and require collaboration and trust between community partners and researchers. This paper outlines a community-engaged neuroscience approach for the development of our developmental neuroscience study on mental health outcomes in preadolescent Latina youth. We focus on "positionality" (the multiple social positions researchers and the community members hold) and "reflexivity" (the ways these positions affect the research process) as conceptual tools from social sciences and humanities. We propose that integrating two unique tools: a positionality map and Community Advisory Board (CAB) into a CBPR framework can counter the biases in human neuroscience research by making often invisible-or taken-for-granted power dynamics visible and bolstering equitable participation of diverse communities in scientific research. We discuss the benefits and challenges of incorporating a CBPR method in neuroscience research with an illustrative example of a CAB from our lab, and highlight key generalizable considerations in research design, implementation, and dissemination that we hope are useful for scholars wishing to take similar approaches.

Paternal expressed emotion influences psychobiological indicators of threat and safety learning in daughters: A preliminary study.

This preliminary study examined the association of children's anxiety, paternal expressed emotion (EE), and their interaction with psychophysiological indices of children's threat and safety learning. Participants included 24 father-daughter dyads. Daughters (ages 8-13 years, 100% Latina) self-reported their anxiety levels and completed a differential threat conditioning and extinction paradigm, during which psychophysiological responding was collected. Fathers completed a Five-Minute Speech Sample, from which paternal EE (i.e., criticism, emotional overinvolvement) was assessed. Anxiety-dependent associations emerged between paternal EE and individual differences in daughters' psychophysiological responding to safety signals during threat conditioning. Paternal EE was positively associated with psychophysiological responding to safety in daughters with high and mean, but not low, levels of anxiety. Although previous work suggests that chronic harsh maternal parenting is a potential risk factor for children's general threat and safety learning, these preliminary findings implicate milder forms of negative parenting behavior in fathers, particularly for highly anxious children.

Bedtime Autonomy and Cellphone Use Influence Sleep Duration in Adolescents.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to examine modifiable environmental contributors of shortened sleep duration in adolescents. METHOD: We assayed sleep duration over two weeks using actigraphy in a sample of 98 adolescents (ages 14-18, 51 female). Reports of adolescents setting their own bedtime and parental monitoring of bedtime were collected and, using principal components analysis, reduced to one factor representing bedtime autonomy. In a subsample of participants (n = 63) frequency of nighttime cellphone use and reports of cellphone disruption were assessed and combined into a composite score of cellphone usage. RESULTS: Increasing age was associated with shorter total sleep duration, r(98) = -.28, p = .006. Age-related sleep duration was mediated by bedtime autonomy, abcs = -.11, 95% BC CI [-.2167, -.0370]. The effects of bedtime autonomy were moderated by nighttime cellphone use such that bedtime autonomy was most problematic for adolescents who used cellphones more frequently, B = -10.44, SE = 4.64, 95% BC CI [-21.3749, -2.8139], compared with those who used cellphones less frequently, B = -1.94, SE = 3.28, 95% BC CI [-9.8694, 3.6205]. CONCLUSIONS: Adolescence is characterized by insufficient sleep due to biological and environmental factors. Although age is frequently cited as an important element in declining sleep duration, our results suggest age may be a proxy for other co-occurring psychosocial changes during adolescence. These findings identify mechanisms by which parents and adolescents may help increase the amount of sleep adolescents achieve.