Emotional Health and Well-Being with Immigrant Families: A Literature Review of the Last 10 Years

Abstract

Abstract The United States has reinforced its anti-immigrant reforms frequently. With these changes in the social and political context, they are a great challenge for this population. Although the immigrant tries to face them, they become toxic stressors for them. Therefore, interactions between parents-children and their family dynamics are affected by stressors associated with the migration process. One of the most worrying is immigrant’s emotional health and well-being. There are international reports that refer to the high level of anxiety and depression experienced by immigrants and their families. This could increase the likelihood that children will become to intensify maladaptive behaviors. There are some theoretical models that point to the training of the practices of parents, inserted in the Theory of Learning Social Interaction (SIL) and in an ecological model to benefit the results of the child, the adolescent and the adult from different social roles. Therefore, the methodology about literature review could be one option to manage it. The objective was to identify the strategies reported in the literature to guide and strengthen the practices of the families of Latino immigrants (in particular Mexican families), encouraging a process of learning and training to cope them. This propose is one way to learn to parents, insert them into a community of cohesion, which can teach their children more effectively and they learn to manage the stress for acculturation. Unfortunately, this proposition is theoretical too, although it has evidence of the voices of different investigations done in the last 10 years.