Mental Health of Latino Adolescent Who Migrate without a Parent: Understanding Risk and Identifying Resilience and Coping Strategies

Exposure to food deprivation (e.g., hunger) and threat (violence) during mid-to-late adolescence (ages 15-19) can have a lasting impact on the mental and physical health of youth. However, the interplay—during this key developmental stage—of acute and chronic exposure to deprivation and threat with modifiable cognitive, psychological, and social factors is not well understood. Clarifying this interplay would help guide the creation of novel interventions that target specific, modifiable cognitive and social mechanisms during development. This is crucial for impacting youth at elevated risk for mental health problems because of markedly dislocating and stressful experiences, such as unaccompanied migration. Due to globalization, the number of unaccompanied minors is increasing dramatically, including in the US where 194,000 arrived from Latin America in October 2020- January 2022. Unaccompanied teen migrants are especially vulnerable to violence and hunger before, during, and after migration. Prior studies in refugee teens show increased risk of PTSD, depression, generalized anxiety, and substance use disorders. Post-resettlement stressors compound these risks. Threat and deprivation in early adolescence predict poor mental health and worsened cognitive capacity, especially executive functions, which continue to develop throughout adolescence. Importantly, not all youth who experience these adverse conditions develop mental health problems; thus, it is essential to identify which risk factors are particularly important and which coping strategies and community resources can buffer their effect. No study, to our knowledge, has examined the impact of all these factors in one comprehensive model among unaccompanied migrant youth. In partnership with community organizations in New York City, our pilot study (CAMINANDO) recruited 74 teens who migrated from Latin America as unaccompanied minors. We found poorer mental health (PTSD, generalized anxiety, depression) and executive functions were differentially associated with violence and hunger exposure. Initial qualitative data further suggest that supportive social networks post-resettlement help youths cope with the impact of migration. We propose CAMINANDO-Mental Health a parallel mixed-methods (QUANT- qual) longitudinal study (18-month follow-up) of 400 migrant youth (ages 16-19) that builds on the infrastructure of our pilot to: 1) examine the impact of exposure to threat and food deprivation (distinguishing acute from chronic exposures) on the mental health status of teens who migrated to the US as unaccompanied minors, and 2) assess how concurrent post-resettlement psychological (resilience, emotional well-being), cognitive (executive functions), and social (daily stressors, supports) factors affect mental health trajectories over 18 months in late adolescence. Our approach is innovative in that it: 1) includes concurrent potentially modifiable psychological, cognitive, and social factors in one model; 2) accounts for both acute and chronic food deprivation and threat; and 3) longitudinally examines the coping strategies and resource-use patterns of migrant teens in community settings. Study findings will inform strategies to improve outcomes for teens migrating as unaccompanied minors.