Age at Arrival and Depression among Mexican Immigrant Women in Alabama: The Moderating Role of Culture

Abstract

Mexican-born women in the U.S. are at high risk of depression. While acculturation is the primary analytical framework used to study immigrant mental health, this research suffers from (1) a lack of specificity regarding how cultural models of living and being take shape among migrants converging in new destinations in the U.S., and (2) methods to empirically capture the impact of cultural positioning on individual health outcomes. Instead of relying on proxy measures of age at arrival and time in the U.S. to indicate where an individual is located on the acculturation spectrum, this study uses cultural consensus analysis to derive the substance and structure of a cultural model for la buena vida (the good life) among Mexican immigrant women in Birmingham, Alabama, and then assesses the extent to which respondents are aligned with the model in their everyday lives. This measure of ‘cultural consonance’ is explored as a moderating variable between age at arrival in the U.S. and number of depressive symptoms. Results demonstrate that for those who arrived at an older age, those with lower consonance are at the highest risk for depression, while those who are more aligned with la buena vida are at lower risk.

Time in the United States and diabetes among Mexican immigrant women: The moderating role of culture

“…This yields an “answer key,” which serves as the best estimate of the substance and structure of a shared cultural model in its aggregate form ( Weller, 2007 ). Importantly, especially in the context of cultural adjustment by way of migration, consensus analysis also reveals patterned ways in which subgroups of the sample deviate in their understanding of the model ( Andrews et al., 2022 forthcoming, Dressler et al., 2015 ). Operationalizing culture in this way avoids the problem of relying on untested assumptions about what people know and value and instead allows for an empirically-grounded description of a cultural space of meaning.…”

Correction: Andrews et al. Age at Arrival and Depression among Mexican Immigrant Women in Alabama: The Moderating Role of Culture. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 5342

“…Several errors were introduced after proofreading, and the authors hence wish to make the following corrections to this paper [ 1 ]:…”