Psychology

Psychology

Introduction

The purpose of this assignment is to summarize and present some of the key areas of interest in psychology and related research, such as cultural stressors and depression, eating disorders, environmental stress on male and female skin, and the warning signs of suicide displayed by the elderly.

Discussion

Cultural Stressors and the Hopelessness Model of Depressive Symptoms in Latino Adolescents

This research underlines the cause and effect relationship between cultural stressors and depression. The Hopelessness Model of Depressive Symptoms has the strongest empirical foundations. It is identified to be the most common cognitive model existing in adolescence in practical terms. Culturally based stressors were deemed most important within the course of this study, surpassing other stressors. This is because the participants of the research were mostly suffering from depression due to parent-child conflict at home, economic stress, discrimination at the hands of peers and acculturative stress. The link between cultural stressors and depression in Latino Youth is stronger even when controlling other factors or negative attributional style (Stein, Gonzalez & Huq, 2012).

Latino youth in the United States displays more depressive symptoms than any other ethnic youth group. No previous study has examined the cause and effect relationship between cultural stressors and cognitive vulnerability in Latino youth. Latino youth faces not only cultural stressors based on their ethnicity, but also culturally-universal stressors faced by youth belonging to other ethnic groups.

Stressors

Most stressors in Latino youth leading to depression can be categorized as culturally-universal. Particular stressors such as tense relations with the family or relative poverty, however, can be attributed to the most prevalent cultural stressors leading to depression. The Latino culture emphasizes on family cohesiveness thus parent-child conflicts are inevitable. Parent-child conflicts as a cause of depression in youth, however, exists within various ethnic groups throughout the United States.

Economic stress, however, is more rampant in Latino families than any other ethnic minority living in the United States as per the 2011 census. Although an important stressor for Latino youth, it is not necessarily a cultural stressor.

Acculturative stress, defined as the stress resulting from interaction between different ethnic groups, was particularly prominent in Latino youth as they tried to integrate with U.S. majority culture. Discrimination and increased pressures in terms of internalizing popular youth culture values and eliminating language or accent differences, however, resulted in depressive symptoms in Latino youth (Stein, 2012).

Naturally, dealing with parent-child conflicts, financial stress, acculturative stress and discrimination, overwhelms the Latino youth. The magnitude of these cultural and culturally-universal stressors led to cognitive vulnerability. Longitudinal studies have reflected that overtime discrimination led to depressive tendencies in Latino youth. The study observed that a negative attributional style exacerbated the effects of both culturally universal and cultural stressors.

Results

75% of acculturative stress resulted due to worries about immigration and family obligations which may or may not include translating the language for parents on various occasions. In terms of discrimination, results of the study showed that Latino youth reacted to name calling, stereotyping as trouble-makers and expectations of getting poor grades by teachers. Financial stress was considerably high in the majority, ...