Pre-scan state anxiety is associated with greater right amygdala-hippocampal response to fearful versus happy faces among trait-anxious Latina girls

Díaz, Dana E.; Tseng, Wan-Ling; Michalska, Kalina J.

doi:10.1186/s12888-023-05403-6

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 136 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Data for the present analyses were collected over 3 years (May 2020 to July 2023) as part of the first wave of an ongoing longitudinal study of socioemotional development (Díaz et al, 2024;Glenn et al, 2022;Mullins et al, 2021Mullins et al, , 2024 adopting a community-based participatory research approach (La Scala et al, 2023). Researchers reviewed study consent forms with caregiver participants during online video calls.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caregiver experienced racism, acculturative stress, and political hostility predict anxiety in Latinx families residing in the United States.

Mullins,

Cheung,

Michalska

2024

Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective: Cultural stress potently predicts mental health inequities, such as anxiety, among adult and adolescent immigrants in the United States. However, less work has focused on preadolescence, a period marked by neurodevelopmental and psychosocial changes that can exacerbate anxiety symptoms. Latina girls, who exhibit heightened levels of untreated anxiety, may be at elevated risk. The present study tests whether cultural stress predicts anxiety symptoms in Latina girls and their caregivers. Method: The primary caregivers of 161 predominantly Mexican-identifying Latina girls (Mage = 10.70, SD = 1.68) reported their exposure to racism, acculturative stress, and political hostility. They also reported their own and their daughter’s anxiety severity. Results: To index cultural stress, a principal component was extracted from composite scores of the racism, acculturative stress, and political hostility questionnaires. Hierarchical regression analyses then tested whether the multidetermined cultural stress component predicted caregiver and child anxiety, with child age, annual household income, and subjective socioeconomic status entered at the first step. Cultural stress positively predicted caregiver (ΔR2 = .13, p < .001) and child (ΔR2 = .15, p < .001) anxiety symptoms over and above the observed inverse effects of subjective socioeconomic status, such that higher levels of cultural stress were associated with elevated levels of caregiver (ß = .37, p < .001) and child (ß = .39, p < .001) anxiety symptoms. Conclusions: The results of this study highlight the role of racism, acculturative stress, and political hostility in escalating anxiety symptoms in Latinx families and identify cultural stress as a factor that likely contributes to the high rates of anxiety in Latina girls during a key developmental period.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caregiver experienced racism, acculturative stress, and political hostility predict anxiety in Latinx families residing in the United States.

Mullins,

Cheung,

Michalska

2024

Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Ethnic–Racial Discrimination Exposure and Anxiety in Latina Girls: Amygdala Volume as an Indirect Neurobiological Pathway

Mullins,

Díaz,

Firat

et al. 2024

Köln Z Soziol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ethnic–racial discrimination, the differential treatment of individuals based on ethnic or racial group membership, predicts poor mental health outcomes such as anxiety. This is supported by long-standing theories on the social determinants of health and minority stress. However, these theories are rarely expanded to neurobiological sciences, limiting our understanding of mechanisms underlying observed associations. One potential neurobiological pathway between ethnic–racial discrimination exposure and anxiety is that ongoing exposure to racially charged encounters presents imminent threats that may modify stress-sensitive neurocircuitry, like the amygdala.The current study evaluated whether amygdala volume mediated associations between ethnic–racial discrimination exposure and anxiety symptoms in Latina girls, a group exhibiting heightened levels of untreated anxiety and disproportionately subjected to ethnic–racial discrimination.Thirty predominantly Mexican-identifying Latina girls residing in Southern California (MAge = 9.76, SD = 1.11 years) completed a T1-weighted structural MRI scan. Using the Perceptions of Racism in Children and Youth, participants self-reported the prevalence and severity of various discriminatory experiences. Participants also self-reported their anxiety symptoms via the Screen for Child Anxiety and Related Emotional Disorders. Controlling for total intracranial volume and annual household income, an indirect effect of ethnic–racial discrimination on anxiety symptoms via left amygdala volume was observed, β = −0.28, SE = 0.17, BC 95% CI [−0.690, −0.017]. The current findings suggest that the left amygdala is sensitive to racialized threats in childhood and that stress-related alterations may, in part, contribute to elevated anxiety in Latina girls. Our data elucidate a potential mechanism by which this form of sociocultural stress can adversely impact mental health, particularly in the transition from middle childhood to early adolescence, a period marked by a host of interlinked neurophysiological and social changes.

show abstract

Neural Substrates of Emotion Processing and Cognitive Control Over Emotion in Youth Anxiety: An RDoC-Informed Study Across the Clinical to Nonclinical Continuum of Severity

Díaz,

Russman Block,

Becker

et al. 2024

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psych

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Pre-scan state anxiety is associated with greater right amygdala-hippocampal response to fearful versus happy faces among trait-anxious Latina girls

Cited by 5 publications

References 136 publications

Caregiver experienced racism, acculturative stress, and political hostility predict anxiety in Latinx families residing in the United States.

Caregiver experienced racism, acculturative stress, and political hostility predict anxiety in Latinx families residing in the United States.

Ethnic–Racial Discrimination Exposure and Anxiety in Latina Girls: Amygdala Volume as an Indirect Neurobiological Pathway

Neural Substrates of Emotion Processing and Cognitive Control Over Emotion in Youth Anxiety: An RDoC-Informed Study Across the Clinical to Nonclinical Continuum of Severity

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About