Past Research
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health
When compared to White youth, Latino & African-American experience higher rates of mental health need. Additionally, they also experience higher incarceration rates. There is a growing body of literature that provides a consensus on the relationship among ethnicity, neighborhood, juvenile incarceration, and mental health outcomes. This consensus helps us better understand how ethnicity and neighborhood context is important in understanding these unfortunate outcomes. Using the national data set of The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we are analyzing the intersectionality of family characteristics and social/neighborhood context as predictors of subsequent mental health outcomes and contact with the legal system in ethnic minority youth.
Ventura County Behavioral Health - Logrando Bienestar
Logrando Bienestar is a grassroots organization that has a working alliance with the Ventura County Behavioral Mental Health Facility. Logrando Bienestar’s mission is to solely focus in providing psychoeducation to the Latino population in the city of Oxnard and a section of Ventura County. The goal of their program is to bring mental health awareness, in hopes to reduce the stigma associated with mental health and to have the Latino community engage in services. The L.B. team is made of community outreach and activism
Alhambra Unified School District - Gateway to Success
Latino youth display high levels of unmet mental health need, defined as a lack of service use when mental health needs are present. When families begin treatment, they are often faced with barriers to parent engagement. Parent engagement involved the parent’s active participation in the child’s mental health services and has been associated with positive child treatment outcomes when compared to individual child treatment. However, parents are typically uninvolved in their child’s therapy, particularly in the context of school-based mental health services. In collaboration with Alhambra Unified School District’s program Gateway to Success, we place emphasis on identifying barriers to parent engagement and identifying methods to increase parent participation through the use of interviews and focus groups.
California State University Northridge - Minority Male Mentoring Project
There are multitude of factors that can deter a male minority student from completing their postsecondary degree. Whether it be a sense of lack of support, income, disconnect from professors or other barriers, M3 is a support group composed of male minority students who are given a safe space to talk amongst each other and CSUN faculty members regarding these common barriers. Psychology, Political Science and Social Work faculty have joined together to create M3 to aid students in successfully accomplishing their degree here at CSUN as well as implement guidance to foster academic achievement.