Suárez-Orozco Carola, López Hernández Guadalupe
Counseling & School Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, United States.
Human Development and Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Front Psychiatry. 2020 Nov 13;11:568167. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.568167. eCollection 2020.
To date, little research has taken a mixed-methods strategy to consider the ways in which living "in the shadows" without recognized legal status may affect mental health. In this study, we took this approach, to examine how legal status, as well as stressors (deportation worries, financial concerns) and potentially protective factors (faculty support, peer support), affect anxiety levels of undocumented Latinx undergraduates from colleges across California. We surveyed 486 participants including both standardized measures as well as open-ended responses. We found that rates of self-reported anxiety between undocumented females were 4 times that of the norm population and that of male undocumented students were 7 times higher as measured by the GAD-7 in the moderate and severe ranges. Our predictive models suggested that participants' rates of anxiety were in large part related to worries about financing their education and their daily living expenses as well as detainment and deportation; having an institutional agent such as a professor whom they can turn to for support served to buffer the effects of anxiety. Qualitative findings triangulated the quantitative findings and provided further insights into the experience of living with the stresses of social exclusion and liminal status.
到目前为止，很少有研究采用混合方法策略来探讨没有合法身份而“生活在阴影中”的方式可能如何影响心理健康。在本研究中，我们采用这种方法，以考察法律身份以及压力源（被驱逐的担忧、经济担忧）和潜在的保护因素（教师支持、同伴支持）如何影响来自加利福尼亚州各高校的无证拉丁裔本科生的焦虑水平。我们对486名参与者进行了调查，包括标准化测量以及开放式回答。我们发现，通过广泛性焦虑障碍量表（GAD - 7）在中度和重度范围内测量，无证女性自我报告的焦虑率是正常人群的4倍，无证男学生的焦虑率则高出7倍。我们的预测模型表明，参与者的焦虑率在很大程度上与对教育和日常生活费用的担忧以及被拘留和驱逐有关；有像教授这样可以求助的机构代理人有助于缓冲焦虑的影响。定性研究结果对定量研究结果进行了三角验证，并进一步深入了解了在社会排斥和边缘状态压力下的生活经历。
