Acculturative stress, emotion regulation, and affective symptomology among Latino/a college students

Although recent work has highlighted the relation of acculturative stress with depression and anxiety symptoms specifically among Latino/a university students, the potential mechanisms underlying these associations remain relatively unknown. The present study aims to examine difficulties in emotion regulation as an explanatory factor in the relation of acculturative stress with symptoms of depression, suicidality, social anxiety, and anxious arousal. A sample of 448 Latino/a college students (Mage = 20.67 years, SD = 1.96; 78.3% female) were recruited from a southwestern public university through an online, self-report survey. Indirect effects of acculturative stress via difficulties in emotion regulation on all outcomes were observed among males and females. Follow-up analyses showed the indirect effect on all dependent variables among Latino men occurred exclusively through lack of access to emotion regulation strategies, whereas the indirect effects among Latina women occurred through a different subfactor of difficulties in emotion regulation for each dependent variable. These findings suggest the potential clinical utility of assessing and targeting acculturative stress and difficulties in emotion regulation in the treatment of depression and anxiety problems among Latino/a college students. (PsycINFO Database Record