More than 80 percent of the undocumented immigrants in north San Diego County report a history of trauma, including witnessing and experiencing violence and living with insufficient food, water and shelter. Those findings are among several from Rice University postdoctoral fellow Luz Garcini, PhD, who recently conducted the first study assessing the prevalence of mental health symptoms among undocumented Mexican immigrants and deportees living near the California-Mexico border.
Using epidemiological methods for studying hidden and hard-to-reach populations, she found that nearly a quarter of undocumented immigrants living in north San Diego County met criteria for a mental disorder, most commonly depression and anxiety (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 85, No. 10, 2017).
Garcini is well-versed in this population’s struggles. In 1993, at age 23, she and her family fled Mexico to escape corrupt police who tried to retaliate against them for seeking justice in relation to a car accident. With two young children, no money, no English language skills, no asylum, and a husband who traveled back and forth to Mexico for work, Garcini and her family settled in with relatives in Houston until they could start earning their own living in the United States.
She began volunteering for a program that provided psychoeducation to parents at risk of losing their children due to child abuse and neglect, many of them immigrants. This experience fueled her desire to help others understand and cope with the stresses of immigration and acculturation. Once she saw the paucity of Latin-American clinicians and researchers in the United States, she knew she had found her path. She went on to earn three master’s degrees and a PhD in clinical psychology.
Garcini spoke to the Monitor about her current and future research.
What are the main psychological issues that you’ve studied?
Many of these immigrants show symptoms of depression, anxiety and somatization. We hear a lot of complaints about headaches, stomachaches and pain. We also see culturally and contextually specific symptoms of distress that are similar to anxiety symptoms.
There is also a lot of self-identity conflict. For example, there are times when the husband doesn’t have a job, so the woman becomes the primary breadwinner. That creates tensions within the family that arise from conflicting cultural expectations.
They also live with constant uncertainty. Their lives can change in an instant if family members are deported. Mostly, they try not to look back and not to look ahead.
Are there members of this population who are having a harder time than others?
Those at highest risk for psychological distress are ages 18 to 25. Often, they’re the culture brokers for their families because they speak English and tend to be highly acculturated. They often have to navigate the system for their families, which can be pretty taxing. At the same time, many of them can’t get professional jobs after high school or college because they are undocumented, so they have to clean houses or work in construction. You can imagine how frustrating that must be.
Now they are facing the possible termination of DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals]. They start thinking, "What’s going to happen to the rest of my family if I’m the one who is leading the way for them?"
Did you encounter any surprises through your research?
Definitely. For one thing, these immigrants rarely reported functional impairments to me, which is a likely reason many of them don’t meet the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria for depression or anxiety. Functional impairment is defined as the inability to function within the domains of work, school and relationships. But even if they are depressed, these immigrants can’t afford not to work. And because social relationships are one of their primary coping mechanisms, they tend to gravitate toward family and friends rather than isolating themselves.
Similarly, even though these immigrants have experienced many traumatic events—everything from warlike conditions to the disappearance of family members to debilitating poverty—the number of individuals meeting diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder is surprisingly low. This, too, suggests the need to develop new trauma assessments and ways of conceptualizing trauma in non-Western populations.
Do you see signs of hope among these people?
Faith-based organizations have done beautiful work in providing counseling and support resources as well as legal advice for this population. They also provide a social network so these families feel at home. However, pastors and priests often tell me, "Yes, they come to us, and we want to help them, but we don’t have training in mental health treatment." So, there is much need for psychologists to work with them.
Where would you like to see your research go next?
I would like to use new biological measures to show how a person responds physically to stressors. If we could show that stress affects young, undocumented immigrants on a biological level, it might encourage policymakers to provide adequate mental health care before these problems get worse.
This situation calls for expertise from many disciplines—not just from psychology, but from epidemiology, political science, biology, medicine, anthropology, sociology, even linguistics. There is a huge need for good research-based interventions and context-sensitive research that can help inform providers, police and policymakers, among others. If we approach this research from an interdisciplinary perspective, we can defend the rights and needs of this population more effectively.
