Late Adolescents' Experiences With and Attitudes Toward Videogames1

A total of 229 late adolescents (a large majority 15 to 19 years of age) completed a questionnaire that assesses a broad range of videogame-relevant experiences, preferences, and attitudes. Videogame playing was found to be a more popular, and a more highly regarded, activity among males than females. Gender differences were also found in participants' ratings of their motivations for playing videogames, their evaluations of particular characteristics of videogames, and their selection of their “most favorite” videogame. The differences between frequent and infrequent videogame players appeared to be limited to differences in the extent to which videogame playing is pursued and evaluated as a positive leisure activity, rather than reflecting broad differences in interest or personality. Some relations were found between participants' self-reported personality characteristics (i.e., self-esteem, empathy, conscientiousness, and introversion) and their attitudes toward videogames.     

Immigration Enforcement Policies and the Mental Health of US Citizens: Findings from a Comparative Analysis

We examined the differential impact of having a family member, friend, or co-worker/community member detained or deported on the mental health of US citizens. In 2019, a sample of 3446 adult participants of White, Black, and Latinx racial/ethnic descent were recruited to complete an online questionnaire. Participants completed the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 to screen for anxiety, depression, and psychological distress. Analyses were restricted to US citizens (n = 3282). Multivariable logistic and linear regressions were conducted to examine the mental health of US citizens who reported personally knowing a migrant who has been detained or deported and by their relationship to the migrant, overall and among Latinxs only. Among US citizens, 32% reported personally knowing someone who has been detained or deported. In multivariable analyses, US citizens who personally knew a detained or deported migrant were more likely to report anxiety, depression, and greater psychological distress. Associations were more pronounced among those who reported having a family member detained or deported. US-citizen Latinxs with social ties to migrants who have been detained or deported were especially more likely to report poor mental health than White and Latinx participants who did not personally know a migrant who has been detained or deported. It is critical that policy makers consider the potential mental health harms on migrants and its own citizens when designing policies targeting migrant communities.     

Fortalezas Familiares Program: Building Sociocultural and Family Strengths in Latina Women with Depression and Their Families

The purpose of this article is to describe Fortalezas Familiares (FF; Family Strengths), a community‐based prevention program designed to address relational family processes and promote well‐being among Latino families when a mother has depression. Although depression in Latina women is becoming increasingly recognized, risk and protective mechanisms associated with children's outcomes when a mother has depression are not well understood for Latino families. We begin by reviewing the literature on risk and protective psychosocial mechanisms by which maternal depression may affect Latino youth, using family systems theory and a developmental psychopathology framework with an emphasis on sociocultural factors shaping family processes. Next, we describe the theoretical basis and development of the FF program, a community‐based 12‐week intervention for Latina immigrant women with depression, other caregivers, and their children. Throughout this article, we use a case study to illustrate a Latina mother's vulnerability to depression and the family's response to the FF program. Recommendations for future research and practice include consideration of sociocultural processes in shaping both outcomes of Latino families and their response to interventions.     

The Relationship Between Trajectories of Family/Cultural Stressors and Depression and Suicidal Ideation Among Substance Using Mexican-American Adults

We used an intersectional minority stress perspective to examine the association between family/cultural stress and mental health among substance-using Mexican-Americans. Employing a unique longitudinal sample of 239 socioeconomically disadvantaged, non-injecting heroin-using Mexican-Americans from San Antonio, Texas, we examined how culturally relevant stressors are related to depression and suicidal ideation. First, we identified depression and suicidal ideation prevalence rates for this disadvantaged sample. Second, we determined how cultural stress is experienced over time using stress trajectories. Third, we evaluated how family/cultural stressors and stress trajectories are related to depression and suicidal ideation outcomes. Results showed high rates of baseline depression (24 %) and suicidal ideation (30 %). We used latent class growth analysis to identify three primary stress trajectories (stable, high but decreasing, and increasing) over three time points during 1 year. We found that the increasing stressors trajectory was associated with higher rates of depression and suicidal ideation, and that stress trajectories had unique relationships with mental illness. We also showed that baseline stressors, sum stressors, and high but decreasing stressors maintained positive associations with mental illness after controlling for baseline depression. Our results highlight the importance of focusing on within-group, culturally specific stressors and addressing both operant and cumulative stressors in the study of mental health for marginalized populations and suggest the importance of early intervention in minimizing stressors.     

Risk Behaviors Among Young Mexican American Gang-Associated Females: Sexual Relations, Partying, Substance Use, and Crime

This research focuses on young Mexican American girls who are not formal gang members yet participate in street-based activities of male gangs and engage in risk behaviors. These females comprise a larger proportion associated with male gangs in inner-city neighborhoods than actual female gang members. Using a qualitative design, the article presents a typology of Mexican American females that reveals a hierarchy based on exposure to four risk-related activities: sexual relations, partying, substance use, and crime. Findings illustrate how outcomes associated with these activities vary according to the girl's relationship to the male gang and status within the community. Also, regardless of their relationship to the gang, participation in these activities resulted in different degrees of negative outcomes. The study concludes that problems associated with these females must go beyond being viewed as individual problems but rather seen within the social, cultural, and economic conditions of their environment.     

Present Moment Contact and Nonjudgment: Pilot Data on Dismantling Mindful Awareness in Trauma-Related Symptomatology

Conventional views purport that mindfulness includes two components: present moment contact (PMC) and nonjudgment. While mindfulness-based interventions that target a broad spectrum of psychopathology, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), emphasize “being present” as a key mechanism toward wellness, researchers have struggled to measure PMC and assess its clinical utility. Is there any inherent value in PMC or is its clinical utility contingent upon simultaneously engaging in nonjudgment? This pilot study introduces an experimental paradigm designed to dismantle mindfulness and examine the utility of these two components. Forty women with interpersonal victimization histories were assigned to either a nonjudgment condition or a control condition. Next, participants recalled their trauma and then wrote down whatever information was present in their awareness. PMC was measured in both conditions by assessing the frequency of present tense verbs used within these written protocols. As predicted, in the absence of nonjudgment, PMC was related to high negative affect and low positive affect, though unrelated to trauma intrusion frequency. In the nonjudgment condition, PMC was no longer related to state affect and inversely related to trauma intrusion frequency. These pilot data suggest that isolating PMC from nonjudgment may be unhelpful and perhaps iatrogenic.     

Provider Perspectives about Latino Patients: Determinants of Care and Implications for Treatment

Primary care settings are the gateway through which the majority of Latinos access care for their physical and mental health concerns. This study explored the perspectives of primary care providers regarding their Latino patients, particularly, issues impacting their patients' access to and utilization of services. Interviews were conducted with eight primary care providers-and analyzed using consensual qualitative research methods. In addition, observations were conducted of the primary care setting to contextualize providers' perspectives. Providers indicated that care for Latinos was impacted by several domains: (a) practical/instrumental factors that influence access to care; (b) cultural and personal factors that shape patients' presentations and views about physical and mental health and treatment practices; (c) provider cultural competence; and (d) institutional factors which highlight the context of care. In addition to recommendations for research and practice, the need for interdisciplinary collaboration between psychology and medicine in reducing ethnic minority disparities was proposed.     

Opposing amygdala and ventral striatum connectivity during emotion identification

Lesion and electrophysiological studies in animals provide evidence of opposing functions for subcortical nuclei such as the amygdala and ventral striatum, but the implications of these findings for emotion identification in humans remain poorly described. Here we report a high-resolution fMRI study in a sample of 39 healthy subjects who performed a well-characterized emotion identification task. As expected, the amygdala responded to THREAT (angry or fearful) faces more than NON-THREAT (sad or happy) faces. A functional connectivity analysis of the time series from an anatomically defined amygdala seed revealed a strong anticorrelation between the amygdala and the ventral striatum/ventral pallidum, consistent with an opposing role for these regions in during emotion identification. A second functional connectivity analysis (psychophysiological interaction) investigating relative connectivity on THREAT vs. NON-THREAT trials demonstrated that the amygdala had increased connectivity with the orbitofrontal cortex during THREAT trials, whereas the ventral striatum demonstrated increased connectivity with the posterior hippocampus on NON-THREAT trials. These results indicate that activity in the amygdala and ventral striatum may be inversely related, and that both regions may provide opposing affective bias signals during emotion identification.     

Perceptions of self-oriented and other-oriented help-providers

Two studies were conducted to assess the relationship between an individual's self-described motivation for being a help-provider (i.e., a lawyer in Study 1 and a physi-cian in Study 2) and college undergraduates' perceptions of, and desire to seek assis-tance from, that help-provider. The major findings were incongruent with the notion inferred from the helping literature that altruistically motivated help-providers would be consistently evaluated more favorably than, and preferred over, egoistically moti-vated help-providers. Specifically, whereas the other-oriented help-providers were rated as more likable, honest, and less devious than the self-oriented help-providers, the self-oriented help-providers were rated as more ambitious, competent, and as earning more money than the other-oriented help-providers. Moreover, although the participants' “desire to hire” a particular help-provider was found to be associated with: (1) their perceptions of the help-provider's characteristics (Studies 1 and 2), (2) their own self-reported characteristics (Study 1), and (3) their anticipated affective state prior to seeking assistance (Studies 1 and 2), no clear relation was found in either study between the help-provider's motivation and the participants' desire to seek assistance from that help-provider. In contrast to the ambivalence demonstrated in response to the altruistically and egoistically motivated professional help-providers in Studies 1 and 2, participants in a preliminary study of perceptions of “everyday” helpers demonstrated a clear preference for altruistically motivated assistance (al-though these participants' evaluations were found to be influenced by the closeness of the relationship between the helper and recipient, the type of help provided, the participants' gender, and the gender of the helper-recipient dyad). Considered to-gether, the pattern of results suggests the broad range of situational and individual difference variables that may affect perceptions of, and reactions to, self-oriented and other-oriented help-providers.