1 - (SYM 83) Examining Associations Among Ethnic Identity, Acculturative Stress, Emotion Regulation, and Internalizing Symptoms: A Mixed-methods Community-engaged Study

Many ethnic minority college students (CS) come from low socio-economic backgrounds, experience racism and discrimination, educational hegemony, acculturative stress, and question whether they belong and can succeed in academia. These daily stressors are well-established risk factors for internalizing disorders (e.g., depression and anxiety) and underscore the importance of one’s ability to regulate emotions during stressful situations. However, the mental health of ethnic minority CS is vastly understudied, and a lack of representation perpetuates health disparities. Indeed, ethnic minority CS are designated as at-risk, with the highest dropout rates in undergraduate education. Given the impact of daily stressors and emotional disorders on ethnic minority CS (e.g., poorer academic performance, suicidal ideation), there is an urgent need to explore emotion regulation (ER), a transdiagnostic factor, in this population. Thus, we conducted a mixed-methods study with ethnic minority CS (N = 100, M_age = 21.2 years old; 43.4% Hispanic/Latine; 75% female), where a subset of these individuals attended focus groups (n = 30). The four focus groups assessed what types of daily stressors ethnic minority CS experience, their beliefs about ER and mental health, and how they manage unpleasant emotions. We conducted content and ethnographic qualitative analysis to analyze this data. Themes across these focus groups were first-generation CS stress and language barriers, experiences of discrimination in the classroom, beliefs that strong unpleasant emotions should not be expressed, self-isolation as a top regulatory strategy, and cultural influence on not discussing mental health or emotional well-being. A multiple regression analysis revealed that as connection with one’s ethnicity increased, depression symptoms decreased (B = -1.03, p = .02), and as acculturative stress (B = .11, p = .007) and difficulty regulating emotions (B = .51, p < .001) increased, depression symptoms increased. Interestingly, stronger identification with one’s ethnicity was not associated with anxiety symptoms, but acculturative stress (B = .10, p= .01) and difficulty regulating emotions (B = .26, p < .001) significantly predicted increases in anxiety symptoms. Difficulty regulating emotions also moderated the relationship between stress levels and depression symptoms. Mixed-methods findings reveal ways to conduct community-engaged work and culturally tailor evidence-based treatments to meet the needs of this vulnerable population, which will be discussed.