This article explores how Mexican-American youth experience stress and trauma in a variety of arenas. Such youth utilize their energy, creativity, and resilience in order to cope with cultural tensions that arise from acculturative processes, role conflicts with family and peers, school challenges, and identity formation processes. Violence, in the form of internalized colonialism, external oppression, and actual violent acts (e.g., gang fights, suicides, and physical and=or sexual abuse), can be a major risk factor for negative outcomes such as substance abuse. However, this ethnographic study demonstrates that many Mexican-American adolescents navigate stressors and traumas in such a way that transforms the potentially distressing events into life-affirming rites of passage. This article explores these issues through qualitative data analyses from a study of Mexican-American youth in a Southwestern city.This ethnographic study examines the experiences of Mexican American youth in the Southwest, illuminating a number of stressors, traumas, and strengths. It considers the overlay of culture, ethnicity, and experience of stress and violence in personal and interpersonal arenas. While some of these experiences are common to all groups, this article illustrates the perspective of Mexican American youth working out their identities in the midst of their
Family violence including interparental violence and child maltreatment is a pervasive social problem that affects all societies worldwide, and its detrimental impacts on people’s mental health are well documented. However, studies on family violence in South Korea are still limited. By utilizing an exploratory retrospective research design, this study explored the extent of childhood experience of family violence and the long-term impacts on mental health outcomes. A total of 90 college students in South Korea participated, and findings reveal that more than half of the participants were exposed to family violence as children, resulting in harmful long-term impacts on their mental health in young adulthood.
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