Mental Health, Minority Stressors and Resilience Factors Among Early Adolescent Immigrant Youth

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2025 May 15:S0890-8567(25)00251-5. doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2025.05.005. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Immigrant youth are a large population in the U.S, yet there are limited studies characterizing mental health and unique individual-level risk and protective factors in early adolescent immigrants. Previous studies reveal variable associations between immigration and psychopathology. We aimed to characterize minority stressors, protective factors, and mental health among adolescent immigrants.

METHOD: We analyzed data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (N=10,310, mean age=12.9, 52.3% males), which included 227 first-generation immigrant youth (G1, foreign-born), 1,033 second-generation immigrant youth (G2, US-born, both parents born outside US), 489 third-generation immigrant youth (G3, youth and parents US-born, ≥2 grandparents born outside US) and 8,561 non-immigrant youth. We compared exposure to immigration-related risk and protective factors and used linear mixed-effects models to test associations between immigration and its related risk and protective factors (independent variables) with self-reported psychopathology (dependent variable), adjusting for demographics.

RESULTS: Compared to non-immigrant youth, G1 and G2 youth experienced more immigration-related stressors (discrimination against country of origin, internalized rejection by Americans), and identified less with American culture, yet showed no differences in psychopathology. G1 and G2 youth reported greater identification with their heritage culture, which was associated with less psychopathology. G3 youth were overall similar to controls in all measures. Findings were generally consistent across racial and ethnic groups and when using parent-report psychopathology.

CONCLUSION: Early adolescent first- and second-generation immigrants have resilient mental health despite greater exposure to minority stressors. Findings suggest strong heritage and American cultural identity may be key resilience factors among US immigrant youth.

PMID:40383189 | DOI:10.1016/j.jaac.2025.05.005