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. 2022 Apr 27;19(9):5342.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph19095342.

Age at Arrival and Depression among Mexican Immigrant Women in Alabama: The Moderating Role of Culture

Courtney Andrews  1 , Kathryn S Oths  2 , William W Dressler  2
Affiliations

Age at Arrival and Depression among Mexican Immigrant Women in Alabama: The Moderating Role of Culture

Courtney Andrews et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Mexican-born women in the U.S. are at high risk of depression. While acculturation is the primary analytical framework used to study immigrant mental health, this research suffers from (1) a lack of specificity regarding how cultural models of living and being take shape among migrants converging in new destinations in the U.S., and (2) methods to empirically capture the impact of cultural positioning on individual health outcomes. Instead of relying on proxy measures of age at arrival and time in the U.S. to indicate where an individual is located on the acculturation spectrum, this study uses cultural consensus analysis to derive the substance and structure of a cultural model for la buena vida (the good life) among Mexican immigrant women in Birmingham, Alabama, and then assesses the extent to which respondents are aligned with the model in their everyday lives. This measure of 'cultural consonance' is explored as a moderating variable between age at arrival in the U.S. and number of depressive symptoms. Results demonstrate that for those who arrived at an older age, those with lower consonance are at the highest risk for depression, while those who are more aligned with la buena vida are at lower risk.

Keywords: Mexican immigrant women; acculturation; cultural consonance; depression; immigration; mental health.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Step-by-step data collection and analysis process.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Interaction effect of age at arrival in U.S. and cultural consonance on depressive symptoms.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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