Yesenia Mejia Gallardo

University of California, San Diego | UCSD · Department of Psychiatry

Racially ethnically marginalized communities in the United States are exposed to structural and interpersonal forms of racism that have harmful effects on their health, wealth, education, and employment (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Racism and Health . https://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/racism‐disparities/index.html , 2021). Although...

There is a need to address the disparities in service use for Latino youth with developmental disabilities and their families. The PUENTE program is a multi-agency service model that utilized an 11-session Promotora-delivered curriculum (Parents Taking Action, Magaña et al., 2017) to promote service utilization among underserved Latino families of...

Familism cultural values have been related to greater family cohesion and reduced conflict in Latinx adolescents and emerging adults. This study explores how emotional experiences related to familism may be associated with family functioning above and beyond familism values. We examined whether familism pride (i.e., the tendency to experience posit...

Asian and Latinx emerging adults in the United States typically hold stronger values and expectations regarding their duty to support and respect their families than their White peers. Yet, research has not fully explored how meeting familial expectations is associated with psychological well-being in these populations. This study examined ethnic-r...

Familism is a core Latinx value that emphasizes deference to family and prioritizing family over the self, and is typically examined as a predictor of positive psychosocial outcomes in Latinx youth and their families (Stein et al., 2014). Few studies have examined predictors of familism in Latinx youth, with the majority of work focusing on how fam...

Familism values promote the positive adaptation of Latinx youth, but few studies have examined potential indirect effects associated with these positive effects. In emerging immigrant communities, where fewer resources are available to youth and families to maintain cultural values and ties, familism may be especially important. In this study of 17...

The aims of this mixed-methods study were (a) to explore quantitatively the fit of the COPE inventory (Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced) for Latinx youth from immigrant families, and (b) to explore qualitatively aspects of coping in this population. Participants were 175 Latinx adolescents (51% female), most of whom were U.S.-born with im...

Life course models of the impact of discrimination on health and mental health outcomes posit that the pernicious effects of discrimination may not be immediate, but instead may become apparent at later stages in development. This study tests whether peer discrimination changes at particular transition points (i.e., transition to middle and high sc...

Recruitment of immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities with first-episode psychosis (FEP) for research studies presents numerous challenges. We describe methods used to recruit 43 U.S. Latinos with FEP and their family caregivers (n = 41) participating in a study to reduce duration of untreated psychosis. A key challenge was that patients were...

Objectives: Latina mothers in emerging immigrant communities experience heightened risk for depressive symptoms because of the convergence of multiple risk factors rooted in economic, cultural, and familial experiences. Previous research with Latina/o adolescents has found that discrimination, and not acculturative stress, predicts depressive sympt...

Objectives: Cultural value endorsement and ethnic–racial identity promote Latino/a adolescent positive adaptation and mitigate the negative impacts of perceived ethnic–racial discrimination. This study explored the intergenerational process of how adolescents develop these cultural characteristics in concert with their experiences of discrimination...

Objectives: Familism values serve to provide key cultural scripts in Latinx families, and these values have been associated with positive psychosocial outcomes for Latinx youth (Stein et al., 2014). Yet, how familism values intersect with the experience of positive emotions remains relatively unknown. In particular, familism pride may be an importa...

Objective: The study examined psychosis literacy among Latinos with first-episode psychosis (FEP) and their caregivers. The authors tested a model that knowledge of psychosis and attribution of illness to psychosis predicted professional help seeking in a cross-sectional design. Methods: The sample (N=148) consisted of 79 Latino consumers who met c...

The literature on parental racial–ethnic socialization (RES) has established the multiple protective effects of RES on developmental outcomes. Although the majority of this literature examines RES processes in adolescence, with the exception of identity processes this literature has not specifically tackled how these messages intersect with specifi...

La activación del paciente ha emergido recientemente como un componente vital en la asistencia médica efectiva (Hibbard & Greene, 2013), pero las poblaciones Latinas suelen demostrar niveles más bajos de activación en comparación con poblaciones blancas no-Latinas (Cunningham, Hibbard, & Gibbons, 2011). Este estudio examinó factores demográficos y...

Narrative communication is effective in increasing public awareness while generating dialogue about varied health topics. The current study utilized narrative communication in the form of a 15-minute motivational film titled La CLAve to help Latinos recognize symptoms of psychosis and begin a discussion about serious mental illness. The study aimed...

To assess the acceptability and efficacy of training community health workers (promotores) in Mexico to both recognize psychosis and to teach others to recognize psychosis. Two studies were carried out utilizing a single-group design. In Study 1, promotores watched a DVD-based psychosis literacy training. In Study 2, promotores were trained to admi...