The current study sought to understand the influence of cultural values on mental health attitudes and help-seeking behaviors in college students of diverse ethnic backgrounds. Asian and Latinx college students (N = 159) completed an online survey in which they reported on their adherence to cultural values as measured by ethnicity-specific cultural values and general attitudes towards mental health. Factor analysis revealed two common factors of cultural values irrespective of ethnicity: Interdependent Orientation (IO) and Cultural Obligation (CO). Regardless of ethnicity, the more students endorsed IO values, the less likely they were to perceive a need for mental health treatment. IO value adherence was also predictive of more negative attitudes towards mental health. CO values were not predictive of perceived need or help-seeking behaviors. Findings highlight the importance of understanding shared cultural values across ethnic-racial groups and considering how the multidimensionality of culture may help explain shared mental health behaviors crossing lines of ethnic group membership.

This preliminary study examined the association of children's anxiety, paternal expressed emotion (EE), and their interaction with psychophysiological indices of children's threat and safety learning. Participants included 24 father–daughter dyads. Daughters (ages 8–13 years, 100% Latina) self‐reported their anxiety levels and completed a differential threat conditioning and extinction paradigm, during which psychophysiological responding was collected. Fathers completed a Five‐Minute Speech Sample, from which paternal EE (i.e., criticism, emotional overinvolvement) was assessed. Anxiety‐dependent associations emerged between paternal EE and individual differences in daughters’ psychophysiological responding to safety signals during threat conditioning. Paternal EE was positively associated with psychophysiological responding to safety in daughters with high and mean, but not low, levels of anxiety. Although previous work suggests that chronic harsh maternal parenting is a potential risk factor for children's general threat and safety learning, these preliminary findings implicate milder forms of negative parenting behavior in fathers, particularly for highly anxious children.

Abstract. The current study focuses on a sample of low- to middle-income school-age Latina girls and their parents and examines how children’s distress proneness interacts with parental empathic accuracy and posttraumatic growth in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to predict children’s empathy and prosocial behavior toward unknown others. Approximately 2–3 months into state-mandated stay-at-home orders, 55 parent–daughter dyads were recruited to participate in this four-session longitudinal study. To assess distress proneness, daughters (ages 8–13 years, 100% Latina) identified their degree of distress in response to pandemic-related stressors. Concurrently, their parents reported how they thought their children would respond to these same pandemic-related stressors, which assessed parental empathic accuracy. Parents also completed an adapted version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory, which assessed perceived positive outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon study completion, a behavioral measure of children’s empathic and prosocial behaviors was collected. Parental empathic accuracy interacted with children’s distress proneness to positively predict children’s affective empathy, such that children’s distress proneness predicted affective empathy at high and mean, but not low, levels of parental empathic accuracy. In a separate analysis, parental posttraumatic growth interacted with children’s distress proneness to positively predict children’s altruistic sharing behavior, such that children’s distress proneness predicted altruistic sharing behavior only at high, but not mean or low, levels of parental posttraumatic growth. The results of this study highlight how positive parental socialization and understanding of children’s tendencies toward distress are associated with children’s empathic and prosocial behaviors, particularly during major global crises.

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Objectives: To understand the influence of cultural values on mental health attitudes and health-seeking behaviors among Asian and Latinx college students. Methods: Asian and Latinx college students (N = 159) from a large public university in Southern California completed a series of online surveys in which they reported their cultural values and attitudes towards mental health and help-seeking behavior. Factor analyses examined whether cultural values are shared between Asian and Latinx students, and logistic regressions investigated whether derived factors from the cultural value measures predicted perceived need for mental health services and help-seeking behaviors. Results: Two common factors of cultural values were evident for Asian and Latinx students: Interdependent Orientation (IO) and Cultural Obligation (CO). For both groups of students, the more they endorsed IO values, the less likely they were to perceive a need for mental health treatment. CO was not predictive of perceieved need or help-seeking behaviors. Conclusions: The current study revealed commonalities between Asian and Latinx cultural values. For both Asian and Latinx college students, adherence to family-oriented and cultural values diminished their help-seeking behaviors and attitudes toward mental health. Findings highlight the importance of utilizing culturally-sensitive approaches in treatment outreach for students.