A Culturally Adapted Intervention for Mexican‐Origin Parents of Adolescents: The Need to Overtly Address Culture and Discrimination in Evidence‐Based Practice

Abstract

Latino/a populations in the United States are negatively impacted by widespread mental health disparities. Although the dissemination of culturally relevant parent training (PT) programs constitutes an alternative to address this problem, there is a limited number of efficacious culturally adapted PT prevention interventions for low-income Latino/a immigrant families with adolescents. The current manuscript describes the level of acceptability of a version of the GenerationPMTO intervention adapted for Latino/a immigrant families, with an explicit focus on immigration-related challenges, discrimination, and promotion of biculturalism. Qualitative reports were provided by 39 immigrant parents who successfully completed the prevention parenting program. The majority of these parents self-identified as Mexican-origin. According to qualitative findings, participants reported overall high satisfaction with immigration and culture-specific components. Parents also expressed high satisfaction with the core GenerationPMTO parenting components and provided specific recommendations for improving the intervention. Current findings indicate the need to adhere to the core components that account for the effectiveness of PT interventions. Equally important is to thoroughly adapt PT interventions according to the cultural values and experiences that are relevant to target populations, as well as to overtly address experiences of discrimination that negatively impact underserved Mexican-origin immigrant families. Due to the exploratory nature of this study, the efficacy and effectiveness of the adapted prevention intervention remains to be established in empirical research.

Healing through Parenting: An Intervention Delivery and Process of Change Model Developed with Low‐Income Latina/o Immigrant Families

“…First, the initial component, embracing the dream, is focused on the need to ground the parenting intervention according to the immigrant experiences that are most salient to parents. Specifically, our cultural adaptation studies have indicated the critical importance of framing the intervention according to the harsh realities of oppression that parents face as immigrants, as well as the motivations they embrace that help them cope with the various forms of adversity that they experience (Parra-Cardona et al, 2016, 2018). Subsequent components are situated according to the theoretical premises of the GenerationPMTO intervention.…”

“…We refer the reader to the original reports of the cultural adaptation studies, which include detailed descriptions of adaptations to curricula according to type of target family (i.e., families with young children vs. adolescents), details of the research designs, and quantitative and qualitative findings from the randomized controlled trials (Parra-Cardona et al, 2012, 2016, 2017a, 2018). …”

“…For example, studies indicate that Latinx adolescents’ perceptions of discrimination experienced by their parents are associated with increased risk for youth internalizing problems and lower self-esteem (Park, Du, Wang, Williams, & Alegria, 2018). We have recently published qualitative reports of Latina/o youth experiencing suicidal ideation stemming from bullying perpetrated by peers who mock youth due to the undocumented immigration status of their parents (Parra-Cardona et al, 2018). Based on this context of oppression, exhortations by scholars indicating the need to overtly address issues of discrimination in prevention and parenting interventions have become urgently pressing (Cardoso et al, 2018; Unger, 2015).…”

“…Furthermore, our culturally adapted parenting prevention interventions explicitly address issues of discrimination in intervention curricula, including ways in which immigrant parents can monitor how these stressors impact their daily parenting practices. We also offer advocacy services to every family participating in our parenting programs to help them obtain resources they need to cope with various contextual challenges, ranging from access to health and mental health services to immigration legal services (Parra-Cardona et al 2018). …”

“…However, when compared to CAPAS and control conditions, statistically significant higher improvements on child internalizing and externalizing behaviors were associated with CAPAS-Enhanced. Qualitative findings indicated that the incremental effects associated with CAPAS-Enhanced were associated with parents being able to adapt their parenting expectations and practices according to specific contextual challenges such as discrimination and within-family cultural conflicts (Parra-Cardona et al, 2018). These findings are highly relevant as they indicate the importance of overtly addressing issues of contextual adversity and discrimination in parenting prevention interventions (Cardoso et al, 2018; Unger, 2015).…”