Depression among Mexican-heritage adolescents in a cultural context

Includes bibliographical references (pages 26-30)The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship that family identity and perceived parental support has on Mexican-heritage adolescents. Self-report surveys were collected from participants who were between 14 and 15 years of age and had at least one parent who was of Mexican-heritage descent. A total of 420 self-reported surveys were collected and then were randomly selected to participate in an Ecocultural family interview (EFI). Bivariate correlations indicated that adolescent depression and family identity were moderately negatively correlated, as well as perceived parental support and depression. Since both family identity and perceived parental support where closely correlated with one another, specific cases were selected based on profiles of scores to better understand why some cases would not fit that pattern. The qualitative data from the EFI???s showed a relationship with spending more time together was associated with greater importance placed on family identity. The cases that described conflict with their families had low perceived parental support despite high family identity and spending time together. These findings suggest that perceived parental support and family identity may mitigate depressive symptoms among Mexican-heritage adolescents