The combined relations of gender, enculturation, and depressive symptoms with health risk behaviors in Mexican-Americans: a moderated mediation analysis

ABSTRACT

Objectives: The present study investigated the relationships of enculturation and depressive symptoms with health risk behavior engagement in Mexican-American college students and examined how these relationships differed by gender. Previous research has noted consistent gender differences in health risk behavior (e.g. alcohol use, substance use, and risky sexual behavior) among Latina/os, and emphasized the role of U.S. acculturation in this difference. Research examining the role of heritage cultural retention (i.e. enculturation), and including the added influence of mental health variables, such as depressive symptoms, is currently lacking. This study sought to address this gap.

Design: A large sample (N = 677) of Mexican-American college students from four universities (located in New York, California, Florida, and Texas) completed an online questionnaire assessing health risk behaviors and corresponding variables.

Results: We found that males who endorsed more behavioral enculturation and depressive symptoms were more likely to engage in health risk behavior than all others in the sample. Contrary to previous literature, no relationship was found between behavioral enculturation and health risk behavior in females.

Conclusion: The current study found behavioral enculturation to be associated with depressive symptoms, and in turn with health risk behaviors among the males in our sample. Additional research will be needed to identify the mechanism underlying the relationship between enculturation and depressive symptoms as well as between depressive symptoms and risky behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Health risk behavior
• acculturation
• enculturation
• Latina
• Latino
• Hispanic
• depression
• gender
• alcohol
• substance use
• risky sex

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Rebecca Weston for her statistical guidance during the conceptual stage of this project. In addition, the authors thank Dr. Derek Iwamoto for the insight he provided on the later drafts of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the American Legacy Foundation and administered by the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.