Campus Location

Abilene Campus (Residential)

Date of Award

5-2023

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0009-9459-6514

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Marriage and Family Therapy

Degree Name

Master of Marriage and Family Therapy

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Joanna Mendez-Pounds

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Lisa Merchant

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Greg Brooks

Abstract

The Latino population is one of the fastest growing minority populations in the United States. While there is vastness and diversity in the countries that represent Latino heritages, Latino people hold similar values that influence their lives including familismo, respeto, personalismo, and many others (Ayón & Aisenberg, 2010; Bean et. al., 2001; Bermúdez et al., 2010; Calzada et al., 2010; Elias-Juarez & Knudson-Martin, 2016). Previous researchers identified stigma regarding mental health issues in Latino communities and the role of values like familismo in contributing to the stigma of accessing mental health support outside of Latinos’ families (McGoldrick et al., 2005). For some Latinos, any type of problem addressed outside the family invites two sources of stigma: public and self-stigma (Pérez-Flores & Cabassa, 2021). Public stigma leads to negative attitudes and discrimination to those perceived as mentally ill and self-stigma is how people internalize those negative attitudes and beliefs. No one wants to be perceived as loco (crazy). Together these two types of stigmata prevent individuals from accessing mental health services (Pérez-Flores & Cabassa, 2021). However, despite stigma, Latinos do attend therapy and through their stories, researchers hope to describe what makes therapy successful for them. This research will present original qualitative research resulting from semi-structured interviews with Latinos who chose to attend therapy despite mental health stigma. The study will use interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore Latinos discussions of how they negotiated and manage stigma about accessing therapy and describe what made therapy successful for Latino participants. Themes from this research will be used to present clinical, research, community, and advocacy implications of the findings.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.