Browsing by Subject "Psychological distress"
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Item A different world [than where you come from] : examining the experiences of Black undergraduate students at predominately White institutions amid the dual pandemics(2023-04-18) Webster, Travette Ann; Garces, Liliana M.; Brownson, Chris; Pierce Burnette, Colette; Reddick, Richard JIn 2020, society as we knew it changed drastically. A global health crisis that highlighted negative disproportionalities for people of color was exacerbated by a front-row seat to our generation's racial awakening. COVID-19 along with the public murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others became known as the "dual pandemics" (Jones, 2021). Prior research identifies a relationship between racial discrimination at predominately White institutions (Feagin, 1992; Grier-Reed et al., 2021; Harper & Hurtado, 2007; Hurtado, 1992; E. Morales, 2021; Swim et al., 2003) and adverse psychological effects on Black (K. F. Anderson, 2013; Carter & Forsyth, 2010; Nadal et al., 2014). However, an extensive analysis of recent literature reveals that research has yet to consider how the current COVID-19 and racial justice pandemics (Madrigal & Blevins, 2021; J. Miller, 2020) affect Black undergraduate students. To this end, this research study explored the experiences and coping strategies of Black undergraduate students in the aftermath of the dual pandemics. The study used Racial Battle Fatigue (W. A. Smith et al., 2007) and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) as conceptual frameworks, and employed qualitative methods – interviews and a written reflection – to examine seven Black undergraduate students enrolled at predominately White institutions. Analysis of the data reveals that the dual pandemics caused severe disorientation and isolation in Black college students. These students are not sheltered by their campus walls. Compounded by an anti-Black institutional climate is the awareness of everyday racism felt by simply being Black in America. As a result, participants described significant levels of anxiety, fatigue, and hypervigilance characterized by intense fear over the past three years. In response to race-based trauma, participants employed various effective coping strategies including cultural identity and collective activism, hope, talking with friends or family, and imitating modeled behavior. Avoidance was noted as an ineffective coping strategy. As a result of the pandemics, Black students showed an increase in problem-focused coping driven by a strong sense of responsibility and high cultural identity. Findings will raise awareness and guide university administrators, Black student organization advisors, faculty, and mental health personnel to taking a proactive role in helping students to mitigate the detrimental effects of race-based trauma at the college level.Item Academic marginalization in high school as a predictor of depressive symptoms in midlife(2016-08) Werwath, Timothy Stephen; Muller, Chandra; Pudrovska, TetyanaAlthough research has consistently shown that higher levels of educational attainment are associated with better mental health at midlife, we know little about specific aspects of education from adolescence and the transition to adulthood that help to produce educational mental health disparities. This study examines the extent to which academic marginalization in high school, as defined by non-academic math course-taking, lowered educational expectations, and repeated course failures, are related to depressive symptoms in midlife. Using data from the 2014 follow-up survey of the High School and Beyond study, I find that high school students who took a non-academic math curriculum had significantly greater depressive symptoms at midlife, net of selection factors and subsequent degree attainment. Furthermore, failing three or more courses in high school or lowering expectations for high school graduation were also independently associated with depressive symptoms at mid-life, although the models suggest that the effect of course failures work through the subsequent likelihood of completing high school. These results highlight the importance of developing a more nuanced understanding of the association between education and mental health, and demonstrate that academic outcomes as early as in adolescence have implications for levels of depressive symptoms much later in the life course.Item Acculturation and psychological distress among first generation Asian Americans : the roles of acculturative stress and social-cultural resources(2013-05) Jung, Sooin; Holahan, Carole K.Most acculturation research has been focused on the direct relationship between acculturation and mental health (Yoon, Langrehr, & Ong, 2011; Salanta & Lauderdaleb, 2003; Koneru, Weisman de Mamania, Flynn, & Betancourt, 2007). However, less is known about the mechanisms for this relationship. Social-cultural resources such as friend and neighbor support may have a beneficial impact on mental health, and acculturative stress such as the level of family conflict and perceived racial discrimination would be expected to be risk factors (Kawachi & Berkman, 2001; Wolff & Agree, 2004; Gong et al., 2003; Kerr-Correa, Igami, Hiroce, & Tucchi, 2007). The present study investigated the mediating roles of acculturative stress and social-psychological resources in the relationship between acculturation and psychological distress among first generation Asian Americans. Data were from 1528 Asian Americans who participated in the National Latino and Asian Americans Study (NLAAS), a nationally representative study of the Asian immigrant population in the U.S. Using structural equation modeling with latent variables, direct and indirect influences on Asian immigrant psychological distress were examined. The findings indicate that higher acculturation was not directly associated with psychological distress for Asian immigrants, but there was an indirect pathway from higher acculturation to poorer mental health through acculturative stress. Asian immigrants with higher levels of acculturation experienced more acculturative stress, which contributed to more psychological distress symptoms. However, this finding was moderated by gender, holding only for women. On the other hand, while a higher level of acculturation was also associated with more perceived social resources, the expected protective effect of these resources was not present. The findings show the complex relationship between acculturation and psychological distress during the acculturative process of Asian immigrants.Item Dyadic analyses of chronic conditions and distress within marriage : a gendered perspective(2014-05) Thomeer, Mieke Beth; Umberson, DebraChronic conditions negatively impact well-being, and the negative impact of a chronic condition can extend beyond the diagnosed person to his or her spouse. This association may be further influenced by gender, as gender can shape how individuals experience their own chronic conditions-- including what conditions they develop-- and how they react to the conditions and distress of their spouses. In my dissertation, I examine how one spouse’s chronic conditions are related to the other spouse's psychological distress over time. I address this using quantitative analysis of the Health and Retirement Study and qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews. In my quantitative analysis, I find that the association between one spouse’s chronic conditions and the other spouse’s distress differs by gender, number of conditions, whether one or both spouses have chronic conditions, and type of condition. Regarding number of conditions, a husband’s number of chronic conditions increases his wife’s distress more so than a wife’s number of chronic conditions increases her husband’s. These associations are mitigated by the chronically ill spouse’s own distress and functional limitations. Additionally, this gender difference is more pronounced if both spouses have chronic conditions compared to if only one has chronic conditions. Regarding type of condition, lung disease and stroke are the most negatively impactful for spouses’ distress, whereas high blood pressure, cancer, and arthritis are not related to spouses’ distress. All conditions, except for stroke, relate to husbands’ and wives’ distress similarly, but a husband's stroke increases a wife's distress initially whereas the wife's stroke increases the husband's distress over time. In my qualitative analysis, I find that when women are chronically ill, they continue to emotionally care for their husbands, which likely protects their husbands from psychological distress but exacerbates women’s own distress. My results point to the importance of promoting the psychological well-being of both spouses during periods of chronic conditions. This is especially critical for spouses of people with more than one condition, chronically ill women whose husbands are also chronically ill, and spouses of people experiencing stroke and lung disease.Item Identity, discrimination, and belonging : the Arab American Muslim experience(2022-08-15) Hashem, Hanan Mustafa; Awad, Germine H.; Ahmed, Sameera; Cokley, Kevin; Whittaker, TiffanyThis dissertation fills a significant lacuna in the literature exploring the experiences of emerging adults with minoritized identities, specifically Arab American Muslims. Arab American Muslims hold an ethnic identity (i.e., being Arab) and a religious identity (i.e., being Muslim) that are commonly conflated. This conflation can have an impact on their understanding of themselves (i.e., identity) and negative experiences from others (i.e., discrimination). Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) ties the meaning-making process that individuals partake in to understand their identity to its influence on their mental health outcomes. According to the cumulative racial/ethnic trauma model (Awad et al., 2019), Arab Americans experience chronic micro-level and macro-level factors of trauma, such as discrimination and issues of identity. Those factors, in turn, impact individual-level and group-level outcomes, including experiences of belonging and mental health outcomes. This dissertation utilized path analyses to examine the role of micro-level factors (i.e., discrimination and identity) in predicting an individual-level outcome (i.e., psychological distress) through a group-level outcome (i.e., belonging) as a mediator. The overall findings provided three main ideas which provide significant additions to the literature exploring the experiences of young Arab American Muslims. First, the findings provide evidence of an intersectional ethnic-religious discrimination experience but a distinction between ethnic identity and religious identity. Second, the main finding that provides an opportunity for further exploration is the significant role that religious identity centrality played in predicting belonging and distress for this sample while ethnic identity centrality did not play a role in these relationships. Third, the role of belonging stood out as an important meditator when explaining the religious identity-distress and discrimination-distress relationships for young Arab American Muslims. While this study’s use of path analyses provides support for these relationships, future research can further explore causal relationships between these key variables through longitudinal studies. Additionally, future studies can explore the impact of cultural-geographical differences, such as the impact of living in an Arab or Muslim epicenter, which may provide more nuance to the experience of this diverse group.Item Marital strain and psychological distress : a dyadic and gendered approach(2017-12-01) Garcia, Michael Alexis; Umberson, Debra; Glass, JenniferMarital strain is detrimental to psychological well-being and can have long-term consequences for health. Past research on marital strain and psychological distress has focused on only one spouse’s perception of marital strain and has centered on heterosexual married couples, raising questions over how the relationship between marital strain and psychological distress may differ for men and women in same-sex marriages. In the present study, I analyze dyadic diary data from 756 individuals in 378 gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marriages to consider how marital strain of each spouse influences psychological distress in potentially different ways across gender and union types. Results indicate that both respondent and spouse appraisals of marital strain are associated with increased psychological distress for all respondents. Women married to men are at an increased risk for distress from respondent-reported marital strain while women in same- and different-sex marriages are especially vulnerable to spouse-reported strain. These findings highlight the importance of dyadic data as well as the inclusion of same-sex couples when examining the relationship between gender, marital strain, and psychological distress.Item The relations of depressive symptoms to economic outcomes for low-income, single mothers(2009-12) Gupta, Anjali E.; Huston, Aletha C.; Dix, Theodore; Jacobvitz, Deborah B.; King, Christopher T.; Osborne, CynthiaThe major goal of this study is to test the direction and strength of the relations of low-income single mothers’ depressive symptoms to their employment and income experiences over a time period following major welfare policy changes in the U.S. (2001 to 2003). The Panel Study of Income Dynamics provided data on 623 low-income, single mothers. The economic characteristics studied were: employment status, hours of work, wages, earnings, a job’s provision of personal control, family income, and welfare receipt. The mental health measure was the K-6 Non-Specific Psychological Distress Scale. The study adds to our understanding of the temporal relations between employment experiences and mental health by testing the social causation, social selection, and interactionist (bidirectional) perspectives. Specifically, this study tested the different perspectives with a wide range of economic indicators, tested mechanisms that may link mental and economic well-being, and combined multiple employment factors to see if patterns emerged that related uniquely to psychological distress. The findings supported social selection as earlier psychological distress predicted future employment, hours, wages, earnings, household income, and welfare receipt. The tested mediator of days of lost work affected by psychological distress indicated an indirect effect of poor mental health predicting diminished job productivity that, in turn, predicted reduced employment, hours, wages, and earnings. Results were similar for subgroups of mothers based on the age of their youngest child or prior welfare history. The single significant finding was that a longer span of welfare receipt predicted worse mental health as compared to mothers who reported a shorter period of welfare receipt. Latent class analysis identified three patterns of employment and welfare receipt across time: a) exchanged earnings for welfare, b) high employment and earnings growth with reduced welfare, and c) moderate employment growth. The groups that exchanged earnings for welfare (about 10% of the sample) evidenced increased psychological distress compared to mothers with high or moderate employment growth. Support for the social selection hypothesis suggests that policies and interventions that help low-income mothers improve their psychological well-being could also enhance their economic well-being. Implications for future research could explore the effects of such policies.Item The role of acceptance in men's restrictive emotionality and distress : an experimental study(2014-08) Grasso, Joseph Reyes; Rochlen, Aaron B.; Rude, Stephanie SandraMen's adherence to restrictive emotionality, a traditional masculine norm, has frequently been linked to higher rates of psychological distress and other negative mental health outcomes. Masculinity researchers have recently begun to study how the effects associated with restrictive emotionality might be related to how men regulate their emotions. Limited findings suggest that restrictive emotionality may be related to non-acceptance of emotion. However, these studies have not examined how acceptance affects the relationship between restrictive emotionality and distress. Further, no published studies have attempted to manipulate levels of men's emotional acceptance in service of reducing restrictive emotionality and distress. The current study tested whether a brief psychoeducational intervention could promote acceptance in men and thus reduce their restrictive emotionality and distress. Participants were randomly assigned to an experimental condition teaching emotional acceptance, or a control condition teaching time management skills. Both conditions consisted of audio recordings that described how these approaches benefit coping with stressful situations, as well as prompts asking participants to write about how this information could relate to their lives. The study also investigated baseline interrelationships between restrictive emotionality, fear of emotion, emotional acceptance, and distress using pretest self-report data. Moderation analyses were conducted to determine whether emotional acceptance might serve as a buffer against the effects of restrictive emotionality on psychological distress. Self-report measures at pretest and at one-week follow-up assessed acceptance, fear of emotion, restrictive emotionality, emotional non-acceptance, and distress. Performance-based measures, including a semantic decision task and a scrambled sentences test, were also used to assess for differences by condition. Contrary to hypotheses, no effect of condition was evident in analyses of self-report or performance-based measures. Self-report data demonstrated a main effect of time, such that distress, emotional non-acceptance, and fear of emotion decreased across conditions from pretest to follow up, while acceptance increased. Restrictive emotionality scores remained unchanged. As predicted, significant intercorrelations were found among fear of emotion, emotional non-acceptance, distress, and emotional acceptance with the exception of restrictive emotionality, which was associated only with greater distress. Finally, the hypothesis that emotional acceptance would moderate the relationship between restrictive emotionality and psychological distress was not supported.