Oscar Fernando Rojas Perez

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Associate Research Scientist at Yale University

Mental health professionals’ developing competencies in relation to immigrant mental health are outpaced by the expanding need for psychological services in this area (Cadenas et al., 2022). The ongoing development of immigrant mental health competencies provides foundational guidance (Mercado et al., 2022). In this exploratory study, we identified...

Racist and xenophobic policies in the United States (e.g., family separations and lack of access to protected immigration statuses for undocumented immigrants) have historically excluded immigrants of color from accessing full civil rights, thus contributing to widening racial inequities in the US. Racism and xenophobia intersected with other syste...

Objective This study aimed to describe initial experiences and lessons learned conducting a trial focused on recruiting racially and ethnically diverse hospitalized patients with untreated alcohol use disorder (AUD). Methods The parent trial is comparing the effectiveness of strategies including Brief Negotiation Interview (BNI), facilitated initi...

Background To promote equitable recruitment for studies conducted in the inpatient hospital setting, we sought to characterize reasons why individuals, both from historically minoritized racial and ethnic groups and the broader patient population, refuse participation in clinical trials within inpatient settings. Methods An exhaustive search of th...

Mental health concerns among juvenile-justice-involved youth (JJIY) continue to be a major health crisis in the United States (US). While scholarship has explored mental health concerns among JJIY, and the link to negative life outcomes, there are gaps in the existing research, particularly in effective interventions and models aimed at addressing...

In the face of harmful disparities and inequities, it is crucial for researchers to critically reflect on methodologies and research practices that can dismantle systems of oppression, accommodate pluralistic realities, and facilitate opportunities for all communities to thrive. Historically, knowledge production for the sciences has followed a col...

Psychologists are positioned to help address societal and public health crises in beneficial ways, including collectively working with public sectors to serve marginalized communities. This article highlights the relevance of helping to address societal and public health crises with collectivistic psychological leadership approaches and uses Latinx...

Background Alcohol use disorder (AUD) commonly causes hospitalization, particularly for individuals disproportionately impacted by structural racism and other forms of marginalization. The optimal approach for engaging hospitalized patients with AUD in treatment post-hospital discharge is unknown. We describe the rationale, aims, and protocol for P...

The mental health burden associated with anti-immigrant rhetoric and ever-changing immigration policies is undeniable, though the psychological and emotional sequalae may remain invisible for years to come. Exclusionary immigration policies, as a form of structural racism, have also led to an epidemic of stress-related health within the Latinx comm...

The number of unaccompanied immigrant minors (UIMs) and families from Central America seeking asylum in the U.S. continues to rise. This growth, combined with restrictive government policies, led to crowded and suboptimal conditions in Customs and Border Patrol and non-governmental organization facilities. COVID-19 further taxed facilities and exac...

This paper draws from the clinical perspectives of a multidisciplinary group of mental health providers serving refugees and asylum seekers during the COVID-19 pandemic within the largest safety-net hospital and Level 1 trauma center in New England, United States. Weaving our clinical observations with relevant pandemic-era policy and empirical tra...

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) offers temporary administrative relief from deportation for undocumented immigrant adolescents and young adults who were brought as children to the United States. Accordingly, DACA has contributed to creating a different landscape of opportunities for this group. However, DACA has been and continues to...

Unaccompanied youth from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, represent a growing demographic in communities nationwide. This vulnerable group often presents with early childhood adversity and repeated traumas that heighten their risk for poor mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic...

We sought to evaluate the psychometric properties of two resilience scales; the Resilience Inventory (IRES) and the 14-item Resilience Scale (RS-14) among Peruvian postpartum adolescent mothers. This cross-sectional study included 785 adolescent mothers who delivered at a maternity hospital in Lima, Peru. The Spanish versions of IRES and RS-14 were...

Current theories, frameworks, and measures informing the conception of well-being draw heavily from a nonminority worldview, which often neglect both cultural factors and frameworks. Using a qualitative design, we investigated how Spanish-speaking immigrant adults conceptualize and experience well-being from a psychosociocultural framework, an inte...

Individuals of Latin American background are less likely to engage in mental health care and underutilize mental health services than other racial and ethnic groups. The low rates of service engagement among the Latinx community in the United States (U.S.) can partially be attributed to service systems that lack culturally and linguistically respon...

Machismo is a Latino male cultural value with a lot of controversy in the psychological literature due to its lack of an operational definition. Scholars argue that machismo is multidimensional with positive and negative qualities. More recently, traditional machismo and caballerismo are used as proxies of machismo when studying Latino men. Publish...

Marianismo is an important cultural value to consider when conducting research or delivering mental‐health services to Latinas and their families. The term was first introduced by political scientists in the 1970s to understand gender roles and expectations among women of Latino descent. Marianismo also intertwined with Roman Catholicism and Latino...

Marianismo is an important cultural value to consider when conducting research or delivering mental‐health services to Latinas and their families. The term was first introduced by political scientists in the 1970s to understand gender roles and expectations among women of Latino descent. Marianismo also intertwined with Roman Catholicism and Latino...

Machismo is a Latino male cultural value with a lot of controversy in the psychological literature due to its lack of an operational definition. Scholars argue that machismo is multidimensional with positive and negative qualities. More recently, traditional machismo and caballerismo are used as proxies of machismo when studying Latino men. Publish...

The current status of cultural competence advocacy is described within the context of the separate subdisciplines of clinical, school, and counseling psychology. Within each subdiscipline, a brief history of each profession is summarized, followed by a description of the main professional organizations and scholarly outlets that characterize each s...

The cultural tapestry of the United States has changed significantly in the past 10 years, particularly in the heartland, as Latina/o immigrants are moving to historically White Midwestern rural communities in search of job opportunities. To better assess the environmental context in community-based research, we developed the Negative Immigrant Com...

This study applied a psychosociocultural framework to examine 95 Latino male undergraduates’ experiences of microaggressions, coping strategies, and etic and emic well-being. The most prominent microaggression reported was being constantly aware that they were one of few Latinos on campus. To cope with their microaggressions, Latino men most freque...

Familism is a cultural value that emphasizes interdependent family relationships that are warm, close, and supportive. We theorized that familism values can be beneficial for romantic relationships and tested whether (a) familism would be positively associated with romantic relationship quality and (b) this association would be mediated by less att...