Mental Health Risk and Resilience among Latinx SGM Adolescents and their Parents - Project Summary/Abstract
This application is in response to NOT-OD-23-166, PAR-21-358, and aligns with NIMHD's key areas of interest
including family health and well-being for SGM adolescents.
Family acceptance and support are critical factors that promote resilience and reduce mental health burden
among sexual and gender minority (SGM) adolescents. The existing knowledge base on family relationships
among SGM adolescents is limited in generalizability beyond predominately non-Latinx, White samples, and is
often based on perspectives of one family member (either SGM adolescents or their parents). Yet, cultural
strengths and stressors influence family relationships and resultant health of multiple family members. Framed
by the SGM Health Disparities Research Framework and the Family Health Development Integrative Model, this
study, through a multistage and multimethod design, seeks to understand intersectional family relationships and
how they contribute to mental health among Latinx SGM adolescents and their parents. Culturally-informed
qualities of family relationships are examined as direct contributors to family health and as potential targets for
future intervention development to mitigate the harmful contributions of structural and social determinants of
health for Latinx SGM adolescents and their parents. In Aim 1, Latinx SGM adolescents and academic and
community experts who work with Latinx SGM adolescents and their families will help adapt, test, and validate
the existing parent-report measure of acceptance for Latinx SGM adolescents in order to establish an
adolescent-report version of this measure (the Parental Acceptance for Latinx SGM Adolescents [PALSA]
measure). This measure will allow for dyadic, multireporter and culturally-responsive understandings of family
relationships among Latinx SGM adolescents and their parents. Aim 2 examines how family relationships from
multiple reporters within families converge/diverge and how they predict Latinx SGM adolescent and parent
mental health. SGM adolescents and a primary parent (N = 249 dyads) will be purposively recruited to ensure
representation of SGM identities (i.e., cisgender sexual minority; trans/nonbinary gender minority) in two
established immigrant destinations (i.e., Arizona and Florida). Aim 3 of the proposal extends Aim 2 findings to
understand how family relationships moderate the associations between structural and social determinants of
health and key mental health outcomes. Aims 2 and 3 collectively will reveal unique strengths and barriers in
Latinx families with SGM adolescents to inform targets to ameliorate SGM adolescent and parent mental health
burden. The dyadic measures optimized in the study can be used to help facilitate resilience in Latinx families
with SGM adolescents by community and clinical providers.
