Más Fuertes Juntos: Attachment relationship quality, but not demographic risk, predicts psychopathology in Latinx mother‐youth dyads

Abstract

Latinx families are increasing in the population in the United States and have documented mental health concerns. Much remains to be understood about mental health predictors within this population. The present study aimed to help fill this gap and offer an in-depth assessment of psychopathology within a large (N = 330) sample of Latinx mothers and youth by exploring associations between sociodemographic risk, attachment relationship quality, and mental health. Demographic risk was not associated with youth or maternal psychopathology, but attachment relationship quality was associated with all indices of psychopathology in youth and mothers. The interaction between demographic risk and psychopathology only added to the prediction of maternal depression, revealing a pattern wherein maternal closeness was associated with lower depression at low and mean but not high levels of demographic risk. We discuss these findings in terms of the importance of supporting parent-child relationships in this population.

Safe haven in adolescence: Improving parental reflective functioning and youth attachment and mental health with the Connecting and Reflecting Experience

“…While there is increasingly widespread consensus and understanding regarding the importance of attachment security in the first years of life (Chambers, 2017; Schore, 2001; Thompson, 2016), the continued importance of attachment security in adolescence has been relatively overlooked, yet also warrants recognition (Borelli, Russo, et al., 2021; Brumariu & Kerns, 2010; Venta et al., 2014). Congruent with findings that have demonstrated the development of “earned security” among teens with less sensitive early caregiving histories whose adoptive caregivers showed higher levels of sensitive support during parent‐adolescent interactions (Beijersbergen et al., 2012), our results suggest that adolescents continue to be receptive to changes in caregiving sensitivity and responsiveness.…”

“…In general, secure attachment appears to be protective against negative psychological outcomes following exposure to adversity (Rasmussen et al., 2019). For example, greater attachment security has been found to be protective for adolescents living in less‐resourced communities with more contextual stressors, including supporting better mental health outcomes among lower‐income Latinx youth (Borelli, Russo, et al., 2021) and indirectly reducing risk behaviors among Black teens through increased self‐worth (Lockhart et al., 2017). In contrast, insecure attachment is linked to more externalizing and internalizing difficulties (Brumariu & Kerns, 2010; Venta et al., 2014).…”

Más que palabras: Understanding the mental health and behavioral consequences of sociodemographic risk and deportation fears in Latinx families.

“…For each indicator, participants received a score of either present (1) or absent (0); a mean “risk” score was then generated across these six indicators, which represented their cumulative risk score. Scores ranged from 0 to 1, with higher scores depicting greater risk; this risk variable was normally distributed (for additional details on these six indices, see Borelli, Russo, et al, 2021).…”

Examining Interpersonal Traumas Across Low Income Latinx Mother-Youth Dyads: Associations Between Maternal Child Abuse Exposure and Racial Discrimination with Mother and Youth Psychopathology

“…To address the fact that we had different measures, we created standardized z-scores to place all measures on the same scale for analysis. Support for the validity of this approach exists in the form of their association with parent-child relationship quality and other indices of mental health [48,53].…”