Psychological Distress Behavioral Patterns Among Latinos: We Don’t See Ourselves as Worthless

Barragán, Armando; Yamada, Ann-Marie; Gilreath, Tamika D.

doi:10.1007/s10597-018-0273-5

Original Paper
Published: 26 April 2018

Psychological Distress Behavioral Patterns Among Latinos: We Don’t See Ourselves as Worthless

Armando Barragán ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7970-303X¹,
Ann-Marie Yamada² &
Tamika D. Gilreath³

Community Mental Health Journal volume 55, pages 232–240 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

A cross-sectional study of 4921 Latinos from the National Health Interview Survey was conducted to examine behavioral patterns of psychological distress among Latinos. Latent class analysis was used to ascertain psychological distress behavioral profiles among Latinos. Analysis revealed four latent classes of distress, which included moderate psychological distress (13.6%); mild sadness, nervousness, and restlessness (13.0%); high psychological distress (2.8%); and no psychological distress (70.7%). Worthlessness, a widely-accepted dimension of distress, was not a significant behavioral trait. Results from the present study suggest that underlying cultural elements affect the subjective interpretations of symptoms reported by Latinos. These findings highlight distress profiles among Latinos and the possibility of overlooking behaviors that are uniquely indicative of distress, potentially leading to the underreporting of serious psychological distress in this population. Furthermore, these findings shed light on other paradoxical issues impacting the mental health of Latinos.

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Notes

The current study used the same data as the CDC (2014) but found 2.8% of respondents reported high psychological distress due to differences in the metrics and analyses used.

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School of Social Work, College of Social and Behavioral Science, California State University, San Bernardino, 5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino, CA, 92407-2318, USA
Armando Barragán
Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California, 669 West 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-0411, USA
Ann-Marie Yamada
Transdisciplinary Center for Health Equity Research, Department of Health and Kinesiology, College of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University, 311 Blocker Hall, College Station, TX, 77843-4253, USA
Tamika D. Gilreath

Authors

Armando Barragán
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Ann-Marie Yamada
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Tamika D. Gilreath
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Correspondence to Armando Barragán.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was not obtained by the authors, since the data used in this study is made publically available by the National Center for Health Statistics and does not include identifying information.

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Barragán, A., Yamada, AM. & Gilreath, T.D. Psychological Distress Behavioral Patterns Among Latinos: We Don’t See Ourselves as Worthless. Community Ment Health J 55, 232–240 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-018-0273-5

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Received: 21 April 2017
Accepted: 19 April 2018
Published: 26 April 2018
Issue Date: 15 February 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-018-0273-5

Keywords

Psychological distress
Latino mental health
Public health
Mental health assessment
Culture