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Parental immigrant status and adolescent mental health in the United States: do racial/ethnic differences exist?
Author(s) -
Degboe Arnold,
BeLue Rhonda,
Hillemeier Marianne
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
child and adolescent mental health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.912
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1475-3588
pISSN - 1475-357X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-3588.2011.00636.x
Subject(s) - ethnic group , immigration , mental health , psychology , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , psychiatry , political science , law
Aims: To examine the relationship between mental health problems and parental immigrant status in a representative sample of US adolescents aged 12–17. Method: We analyzed the US 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) restricted to 32,849 adolescents aged 12–17. Parents or guardians in random‐digit‐dial sampled households were interviewed by telephone from April 2007 through July 2008 about one of their children, selected at random. Five mental health measures were used: prior medical diagnoses of (a) depression, (b) anxiety, and (c) behavioral problems; parental reports of the adolescent (d) feeling inferior/worthless, and (e) episodes of being withdrawal from others. Logistic regression models were employed to examine the relationship between mental health problems and parental immigrant status. Results: Overall, 19.4% of adolescents had at least one immigrant parent. After adjusting for sociodemographic factors, all adolescents with immigrant parents have decreased odds of behavioral problems (OR 0.43, p < .000), but no significant differences in the odds of depression, anxiety, worthlessness, and withdrawal compared to adolescents with US‐born parents. Similarly, White, Black, and Hispanic adolescents with immigrant parents had decreased odds of behavioral problems (OR 0.35, p < .000; OR 0.31, p < .01; and OR 0.24, p < .05, respectively) compared to their counterparts with US‐born parents. Conclusion: Evaluation of psychological and mental health problems among adolescents in the United States should take parental immigrant status and other sociodemographic factors into account.