Predictors of Violence and Lethality Among Latina Immigrants: Implications for Assessment and Treatment

Latino Mother/Daughter Dyadic Attachment as a Mediator for Substance Use Disorder and Emotional Abuse

“…Future studies should assess if the pathways among our exposure, mediator, and outcome variables run in the opposite direction. To further expand our understanding of emotional abuse among Latinos, future work should incorporate psychometrically reliable and valid measures of emotional abuse that yield continuous scores for the different commonly accepted types of maltreatment (49) and should include complementary assessment tools, semi-structured comprehensive interviews, clinicians' observations, and behavioral functional analysis of violent acts (50). Based on the nature of the survey instrument utilized in our study, we were unable to determine whether the mothers who were abused by their children were abused by the daughter who participated in the study versus another daughter, another son, or any combination thereof.…”

Associations between drug/alcohol use and emotional abuse: Who perpetrates emotional abuse against Latina women?

“…Finally, the intersection between emotional, physical, and sexual abuse should be studied because although emotional abuse is the most prevalent, victims of abuse are often exposed to more than one type of violence. [1] …”

“…Additionally, Latinas may be further reluctant to report emotional abuse due to fear that extended family members will retaliate against their children and fear of deportation of their family members and themselves. [1] Researchers suggest that a lower proportion of Latina women, in comparison to their Latino male partners, report being abused by spouses. [28,29] Another important limitation is that this study did not assess whether emotional abuse was a consequence of illicit substance abuse.…”

“…Further work should include the use of complementary assessment tools, semi-structured and comprehensive interviews, clinicians' observations, and behavioral functional analysis of violent acts to expand our understanding of the patterns, characteristics, and severity of emotional abuse experienced by Latinas. [1] This study did not address participants' history of exposure to child abuse and/or account for witnessing abuse among family members-factors that could have potentially influenced children to become abusers or victims as adults. [26,27] While this study addresses the potential confounding roles of country of origin, age, and education, we were not able to adjust for additional contextual characteristics (e.g., acculturation, stress), family factors (e.g., gender role, marianismo levels), peer associations and influence (e.g., association with deviant peers; social and emotional support), psychological and behavioral factors (e.g., conduct problems/antisocial behaviors, personality disorder, depression, suicide attempts, self-esteem), and cognitive factors (hostile attributes, attitudes, and beliefs).…”

“…[1][2][3] Emotional abuse occurs when a person verbally attacks another person with disrespect or fury (e.g., criticism of others' appearance or personality, mockery, teasing, and swearing) that may generate psychological pain. [4] Emotional abuse carries with it negative social, physical, and emotional consequences such as depression, hostility, and somatization [4] in addition to detrimental effects on women's gynecological, gastrointestinal, and central nervous systems.…”