{"id":230194,"date":"2025-05-09T14:46:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T18:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=230194"},"modified":"2025-06-24T10:38:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T14:38:00","slug":"phd-student-analyzes-mental-health-challenges-for-hispanic-immigrants-to-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2025\/05\/phd-student-analyzes-mental-health-challenges-for-hispanic-immigrants-to-the-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"Ph.D. Student Analyzes Mental Health Challenges for Hispanic Immigrants to the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

Hispanic immigrants face a daunting and unique set of mental and emotional health issues, according to new research by School of Social Work Ph.D. student Leah Holle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She surveyed 198 Hispanic immigrants, spanning a variety of ages, citizenship statuses, number of years living in the U.S., ages, education levels, and household incomes. Among her findings: \u201cemotional well-being\u201d positively correlated with religiosity, while exhibiting something of an \u201cupside-down U-shape\u201d relative to age: lowest in middle adulthood (30-59), but comparatively higher in young adulthood (18-29) and late adulthood (60-85).<\/p>\n

Her paper, \u201cThe Emotional Well-Being and Mental Health of Hispanic Immigrants in the United States: Understanding the Impact of Traumatic Experiences and Coping Styles\u201d<\/a> was recently published in the journal Social Work in Mental Health.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, \u2018the coping styles of Hispanic immigrants\u2019 wasn\u2019t necessarily my niche, so it was a lot of learning for me, which I was excited about,\u201d Holle says.<\/p>\n

Her research was funded with $5,000 from the School of Social Work, through Holle\u2019s advisor Cristina Mogro-Wilson<\/a>, director of the school\u2019s Ph.D. program. The funding was for the class \u201cResearch II: Survey Research Methods,\u201d<\/a> with Holle’s publication a result of the dataset she originally collected in that class.<\/p>\n

Holle suggests one way that others can piggyback off of her work.<\/p>\n

\u201cA large part of [emotional well-being] has to do with acculturation,\u201d Holle explains. \u201cThe one thing I wish I\u2019d gotten more information about was the level to which they were acculturated qualitatively<\/em>, not just the number of years they\u2019d been here quantitatively<\/em>,\u201d she said, encouraging others in the field to take up that line of research. \u201cFor example, examining the extent to which they\u2019re able to continue with rituals, customs, and traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next for Holle? She recently received the Summer Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for her upcoming research focusing on the Intersection of religious trauma and disordered eating. That project recently received IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval, with surveys going out starting in mid-April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hispanic immigrants face a unique set of mental and emotional health issues, according to new research by Ph.D. student Leah Holle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":181558,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2459,2473,1870,1875],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2658],"class_list":["post-230194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-graduate-students","category-human-rights","category-ssw","category-grad-school"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-01 04:51:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230194"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230486,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230194\/revisions\/230486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/181558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230194"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=230194"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=230194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}