Cortisol Synchrony in Adolescents and Their Parents

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Despite their citizenship, over 3.2 million US-born Latino children of undocumented parents (i.e., those in “mixed-status families”) experience chronic stress associated with potential or actual forced deportation of their parents. Relative to US-born Latino children in documented-status families, US-born Latino children in mixed- status families are exposed to additional acute and chronic stressors placing them at elevated risk for substance use, anxiety and depression. The absence of research using direct assessment of family documentation status impedes the ability to determine structural burden of stress exposure and its health consequences. Further, chronic stress, such as the burden of deportation stress within immigrant families, can be culturally bound and standardized survey measures may not be indicative of the negative health impact that physiological stress has within the family environment. The objective of this study is to determine the potential mental and behavioral health vulnerabilities of US-born Latino adolescents (ages 12- 16) with undocumented parents. This will be done through a dyadic bio-behavioral project based on central principles of community– based research. The primary aim is to describe cortisol synchrony in Latino adolescent-parent dyads, and compare the synchrony profiles of dyads in mixed-status families with those in documented families. Aim 2 is to delineate variability in self-appraised stressors among mixed-status and documented-status US-born Latino adolescent-immigrant parent dyads. Aim 3 will describe the magnitude of correlations of cortisol synchrony with parent and adolescent self-appraised stressors and youth self-reports of substance use, anxiety, and depression. This study will enroll n=25 US-born Mexican adolescent-immigrant parent dyads from mixed-status families and n=25 US-born Mexican adolescent-immigrant parent dyads from documented-status families who reside in the Houston-area. Direct assessments and self-reported surveys will be utilized. Saliva samples will be assayed for cortisol. Adolescents and parents will report on deportation stress, acculturative stress (SAFE- R), and economic stress (HSI-A and HSI-2 subscales). Adolescents will also report on substance use, anxiety (PAI), and depression (CES-D). This study is highly innovative for three reasons: (1) Explicit focus on a dominant contemporary issue – the management of US-born children and their undocumented immigrant parents – advanced under the previous administration but currently being called into question; (2) While there is a long history of studies focused on individuals' diurnal pattern of cortisol, there is a dearth of research using a dyadic bio-behavioral approach to capture cortisol synchrony among adolescent-immigrant parent households; and (3) A refinement in methodologies by using complementary objective and subjective assessments of stress to avoid potential ambiguity in health effects, recognizing that deportation stress is culturally bound. This study has implications to inform future community-based research projects focused on US-born children of undocumented immigrant parents, one of the fastest growing segments of the US.