Date of Award

8-2020

Document Type

Campus Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Lizabeth Roemer

Second Advisor

Ester R. Shapiro

Third Advisor

Susanna M. Gallor, Lorena Estrada-Martinez

Abstract

Mental health prevention programs offer one avenue through which to offer mental health equity. In this investigation, I conducted a preliminary program evaluation of a culturally adapted stress management prevention intervention workshop for Latinx college students. The prevention workshop is an acceptance based behavioral therapy (ABBT) workshop, which was adapted, incorporating feedback from Latinx students, to be culturally responsive to the needs of Latinx students at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB), an urban predominantly non-residential institution. Focus groups with Latinx students were conducted to determine the cultural adaptations necessary and these adaptations were integrated into the existing workshop. Then, the culturally adapted stress management prevention intervention workshop was offered as a free service to interested Latinx students. Results from focus group thematic analysis bore several themes and the following were included as adaptations: participants’ managing family responsibilities and expectations, managing multiple responsibilities, feelings of guilt related to this negotiation, mental health stigma, and change of sociopolitical context and discrimination. A total of 19 participants completed the workshop. Participants reported a significant reduction in depression scores and general distress. Decreases in anxious arousal, stress (general anxiety), and experiential avoidance were not statistically significant but had medium to large effect sizes. Quality of life, student course engagement, and mental health continuum total and its subscales were not impacted by the workshop except for the social wellbeing subscale. These findings illuminate the ways this culturally adapted prevention intervention workshop can benefit Latinx students’ mental health. I consider these promising findings in the context of participant demographic variability and current Latinx sociopolitical context. Last, I offer considerations for future directions in Latinx prevention intervention research.

Comments

Free and open access to this Campus Access Thesis is made available to the UMass Boston community by ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. Those not on campus and those without a UMass Boston campus username and password may gain access to this thesis through resources like Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global (https://www.proquest.com/) or through Interlibrary Loan. If you have a UMass Boston campus username and password and would like to download this work from off-campus, click on the "Off-Campus UMass Boston Users

Download
Off-Campus UMass Boston Users

Share

COinS