Subjective Social Status and Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms and Disorders among Low Income Latinos in Primary Care: The Role of Emotion Dysregulation

Accumulating evidence suggests that Latinos experience greater anxiety- and depression-related health disparities compared to non-Latino Whites. Perceived social status may help to account for these mental health disparities among Latinos, but the specific mechanisms underlying these relations are still unknown. One possible explanation for this relation is emotion dysregulation. Therefore, the present study sought to test whether emotion dysregulation maintains an explanatory role in the relation between subjective social status and anxiety and depressive symptoms and disorders among low income Latinos. Latino adults (N = 383; M age = 38.9 years, SD = 11.4; 86.2% female) were recruited for this study from a primary care health clinic. As hypothesized, there was a statistically significant indirect association of subjective social status via emotion dysregulation in relation to depressive (B = −0.42, Bootstrapped 95% CI [−0.81, −0.08], completely standardized estimate = −0.07), suicidal (B = −0.04, Bootstrapped 95% CI [−0.10, −0.01], completely standardized estimate = −0.04), social anxiety (B = −0.09, Bootstrapped 95% CI [−0.20, −0.02], completely standardized estimate = −0.05), and anxious arousal symptoms (B = −0.13, Bootstrapped 95% CI [−0.28, −0.02], completely standardized estimate = −0.05), as well as number of depressive and anxiety disorder diagnoses (B = −0.03, Bootstrapped 95% CI [−0.05, −0.004], completely standardized estimate = −0.06). Post-hoc tests evaluated indirect associations of subjective social status via specific facets of emotion dysregulation. Overall, the current study found novel empirical evidence for the explanatory role of emotion dysregulation in the associations between subjective social status and anxiety/depressive symptoms and disorders in a sample of economically disadvantaged Latinos. Future work is needed to develop and evaluate targeted interventions that can modify these constructs to offset anxiety/depressive symptoms and disorders among this population.