Cultural stress is toxic stress: An expanded cultural stress theory model for understanding mental health risk in Latinx immigrant youth.

Abstract

Objectives: Latinx immigrant youth are at greater risk for mental health (MH) concerns than their nonimmigrant Latinx peers. Efforts to address mental health disparities have resulted in the much-needed development of theoretical frameworks explaining mental health disparities in marginalized populations. A theoretical framework that is particularly relevant to mental health disparities among Latinx immigrant youth is the Cultural Stress Theory (CST); however, an expansion of this model is necessary to thoroughly describe and explain mental health risk in this population. Method: This article integrates two frameworks—Toxic Stress Theory and the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities research framework—with CST to better explain mental health risk in Latinx immigrant youth. In doing so, we propose an expanded model that seeks to build on the strengths of CST in two important ways—expanding the breadth of relevant ecological domains and emphasizing the continued focus on specific mechanisms and their associations across levels. Results: The proposed expanded CST model acknowledges a range of influences from the broad systemic and sociopolitical level to the biological level to comprehensively guide research that can better explain mental health risk in Latinx immigrant youth. Conclusions: An expanded CST model that incorporates the two highlighted frameworks can elucidate additional mechanisms by which cultural stressors influence mental health risk in Latinx immigrant youth. Such mechanistic work holds the key to effectively reducing mental health disparities for Latinx immigrant youth.