A new study by NYU Silver’s James Jaccard finds Latinx teens with depression are more likely to experiment with alcohol if they and their mothers experienced bias.
Latinx adolescents in the U.S. have higher rates of depression and past-year alcohol use than peers in any other single racial or ethnic group. Understanding the factors driving that disparity is critical for developing effective interventions to address it. To gain such insight, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Assistant Professor Ai Bo, PhD ’19, and NYU Silver Professor Emeritus James Jaccard conducted an analysis of data from hundreds of New York City Latinx young adolescents and their mothers. The study, published online first in Prevention Science, found an association between the adolescents’ reported experiences of racial and ethnic discrimination, symptoms of depression and intention to drink alcohol in the future. Moreover, the study observed an intergenerational effect; Latinx mothers’ perceived experiences with discrimination also were associated with increases in adolescents’ intentions to drink alcohol in the future.
“Our findings underline the need for depression or alcohol prevention programs for inner-city Latinx youth to address discrimination-based stress and negative emotions to promote shifts from maladaptive stress coping (e.g., using alcohol) to more positive coping strategies,” wrote Drs. Bo and Jaccard. Given the negative effects parents’ exposure to discrimination can have on their children, they proposed including Latinx parents in programs designed to mitigate the impact of racial and ethnic bias.
The study used data collected from 2009-2015 from 800 Dominican and Puerto Rican middle school students in the South Bronx and their mothers for Dr. Jaccard’s Underage Drinking in Latino Youth study. The interviews with both the adolescents and mothers included questions about perceived racial and ethnic discrimination experiences, depressive symptoms and demographics. In addition, the adolescents were asked about their intentions to drink alcohol over the next six months. The study’s analytic model was designed both to identify relationships between those factors and to reveal pathways by which those factors are related. Drs. Bo and Jaccard explained, “Unpacking these paths may yield important prevention implications because it suggests that the neglected topic of racial and ethnic discrimination needs to be addressed in prevention programs for Latinx adolescents and/or their parents.”
As hypothesized, Drs. Bo and Jaccard found that both concurrently and over-time, adolescents’ perceived experiences of anti-Latinx discrimination were associated with symptoms of depression. Those depressive symptoms were, in turn, associated with stronger intentions to use alcohol. Likewise, Latinx mothers’ perceived discrimination experiences were associated with their adolescent children having stronger intentions to drink alcohol in the future, reflecting complex linkages between parent experiences and the behavior of their adolescent children. Maternal reported experiences of discrimination were tied to the mothers’ own depressive symptoms, which, in turn, was associated with their children’s depressive symptoms and subsequent child drinking intentions.
“Our findings,” wrote Drs. Bo and Jaccard, “provide an empirical foundation for future prevention research and programs aimed at mitigating the adverse effects of racial and ethnic discrimination on depression and alcohol use among Latinx population and other racialized communities.”