Biomedical subjects

L H Rogler

Publications and source records attributed to L H Rogler.

29 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

PubMed1991

Acculturation and mental health status among Hispanics. Convergence and new directions for research.

Acculturation, the process whereby immigrants change their behavior and attitudes toward those of the host society, is a fundamental part of migration-induced adaptations to new sociocultural environments. A rapidly expanding research literature on acculturation has accompanied the growth of international migrations. In response to the need to integrate the growing literature on acculturation and mental health status among Hispanics in the United States, and to identify points of convergence and new directions for research, 30 publications were examined. Points of convergence are identified, as are problems and limitations. The research needs new directions, proceeding from but not constricted by the assumptions and procedures in the work already done.

Acculturation↗

PubMed1990

Hero/heroine modeling for Puerto Rican adolescents: a preventive mental health intervention.

Culturally sensitive treatments of the special mental health needs of high-risk Puerto Rican adolescents are lacking. The hero/heroine intervention was based on adult Puerto Rican role models to foster ethnic identity, self-concept, and adaptive coping behavior. 90 nonclinical Puerto Rican 8th and 9th graders were screened for presenting behavior problems in school and randomly assigned to an intervention and a control group. After 19 sessions, the intervention significantly increased adolescents' ethnic identity and self-concept and reduced anxiety. Treatment outcomes varied as a function of grade level, sex, and household composition. Self-concept was negatively affected among girls from intact families. The study supports the effectiveness of the culturally sensitive modality as a preventive mental health intervention for high-risk Puerto Rican adolescents, especially from single-parent families.

Acculturation↗

PubMed1990

Culturally sensitive psychotherapy for Puerto Rican children and adolescents: a program of treatment outcome research.

Recognition of cultural distance between Hispanic clients and non-Hispanic therapists has prompted efforts to introduce culture into therapy, but there is little evidence that such efforts influence treatment outcomes. This article evaluates treatment outcomes from a program of research on modeling therapy with Puerto Ricans, targeting anxiety symptoms, acting-out behavior, and self-concept problems. Evaluation of outcomes confirmed the impact of culturally sensitive modeling therapy on anxiety symptoms and other selected target behaviors, but negative treatment effects also were evident. Results suggest that new approaches to psychotherapy for special populations, such as Hispanic children and adolescents, should be buttressed by programmatic research oriented toward the comparative evaluation of treatment outcomes and should be attuned to therapeutic processes mediating between culture and outcome.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1989

Homogamous assortative mating among Puerto Rican families: intergenerational processes and the migration experience.

Homogamous assortative mating is examined in the context of intergenerational processes and the migration experience in two generations of Puerto Rican families in New York City: mothers and fathers in a parent generation (100 pairs) and their married child and the child's spouse in the child generation (100 pairs). The variables used to examine intergenerational processes and to assess homogamy are age, education, and the degree of acceptance of two Puerto Rican cultural values--familism and fatalism. The findings indicate clear and pervasive intergenerational differences and discontinuities but homogamous marital patterns in each generation. The sociocultural dislocations resulting from the migration experience from Puerto Rico to New York City do not impede the restitution of marital homogamy in the host society with respect to either general or culture specific variables.

Acculturation↗

PubMed1989

The meaning of culturally sensitive research in mental health.

To answer the question of what culturally sensitive mental health research is, the author focuses on the entire process of research. He argues that research is made culturally sensitive through a continuing, incessant, and open-ended series of substantive and methodological insertions and adaptations designed to mesh the process of inquiry with the cultural characteristics of the group being studied. Illustrations include pretesting and planning of research, collection of data and translation of instruments, instrumentation of measures, and analysis and interpretation of data. The insertions and adaptations ideally have a cumulative effect in rendering individual projects culturally sensitive and in building culturally informed research.

Cross-Cultural Comparison↗

PubMed1988

Folk hero modeling therapy for Puerto Rican adolescents.

Puerto Ricans are concentrated in the Northeastern United States in predominantly low socioeconomic status, urban Hispanic communities. Due to a constellation of stressors associated with their minority status, bilingualism and bicultural conflicts, Puerto Rican adolescents are at high risk of mental disorder. Research has shown that factors such as migration experiences, low socioeconomic status, and Hispanic values conflicting with Anglo culture (e.g., familism, spiritualistic and folk beliefs, orientation to time) are associated with higher rates of psychiatric symptomatology in the Hispanic population. Community mental health resources are under utilized, and traditional therapy modalities have had limited success in remedying the emotional and behavioural problems of Hispanics. This paper reviews several approaches to the delivery of culturally sensitive mental health services to Hispanic populations and describes the development of a new modality for Puerto Rican adolescents. The modality presents Puerto Rican folk heroes and heroines in a modelling therapy targeted towards enhancing adolescents' pride in their ethnic heritage, self-esteem, and adaptive coping with stress. The therapy was implemented on a small-group basis with 21 Puerto Rican adolescents, some of whom participated with their mothers. A clinical evaluation of the therapy was conducted by summarizing therapists' progress reports on each participant and by interviewing the participants about their impressions of the therapy experience. Progress reports and participants' self-reports indicated that the adolescents increased in self-disclosure and self-confidence; they gained pride in being Puerto Rican; they learned adaptive mechanisms for coping with stress; and they enjoyed learning about famous Puerto Ricans and their culture.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1988

Discriminant analysis of clinical outpatients and public school children by TEMAS: a thematic apperception test for Hispanics and blacks.

This study investigated the utility of the minority version of the Tell Me a Story (TEMAS) test, a thematic apperception technique for minorities and nonminorities, by discriminating public school and clinical Hispanic and Black children. The test is composed of 23 stimuli, depicting minority characters interacting in urban settings, and is scored for nine personality functions (e.g., aggression and anxiety). The subjects were 100 outpatients at psychiatric centers and 373 public school students, all from low socioeconomic (SES), inner city families. All subjects were tested individually by examiners of the same ethnicity. Results indicated that TEMAS profiles significantly, p less than .001, discriminated the two groups and explained 21% of the variance independent of ethnicity, age, and SES. Classification accuracy, based on the discriminant function, was 89%. The TEMAS profiles interacted with ethnicity; better discrimination was evident for Hispanics than Blacks. Results are discussed in terms of the need to develop and validate culturally sensitive personality tests for ethnic minorities.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1987